


i am bound for the promised land

by jonphaedrus



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015), Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical language, Coma, Coma Dreams(?), Gun Violence, Horror, Implied relationship abuse, M/M, Medical Horror, OTGW-Canon Atmosphere, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Racism, Religion, Skeletons, Southern Gothic, atmospheric horror, horror imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-06 10:51:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5414081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"beware the beast" they say and lancelot laughs and says "we are the beast"</p><p>[ the over the garden wall/kingsman crossover nobody asked for ; kingsman bb 2015 ]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. going over the mountain

**Author's Note:**

> [going over the mountain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKXCHt_N7oA)

[ Banner done by the amazing [Linda](http://waltermittie.tumblr.com/)! ]

“Sounds good to me,” Harry said, over his shoulder. “It’s been a while since we went out for Thai—“ he nearly tripped on a tree root, and regained his footing a moment later by pressing his hand against a tree trunk, juggling his armful with his other. “So I think that would be lovely.” 

“Fantastic,” James replied, yelping as he tripped on the same root and nearly crashed into Harry’s back. “Jesus, Har, watch where you’re stepping.”

“We both tripped on it,” he replied, starting to walk again. Running fingers through his fringe, pressing it back from his face, Harry looked around, confused. “Did we take a wrong turn?”

“Well, I mean, we were going the right direction to get back to the estate,” James replied, also looking around. “We should just have to keep going this way and then we’ll get back there by sunset.” Harry pursed his lips, brow furrowed, but didn’t immediately say that didn’t seem to be the case—this forest was very different from the ones around the Kingsman estate, which were almost postcard perfect, green and lush. These were sun-dried, at the end of a long, hot summer. Also, they weren’t the right type of trees. But, that could just be his imagination. “How’s the egg?”

“Oh, the—egg?” Harry looked down, and saw, tucked into the crook of his left arm and held against his chest, was a large egg, about the size of an ostrich egg. “Oh, it’s fine.” He’d been so confused about them getting turned around that he’d frankly forgotten about it.

“I can carry it if you want a rest?” James offered, starting to move again, and Harry shook his head.

“No, I’m fine with it. It’s not particularly heavy.” James grunted, moving downhill ahead of him, and Harry followed, carefully placing his feet so as not to go sprawling and drop or crack the egg. “Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

“Pretty certain!” James called back. “Should be just over the next rise!” Harry didn’t have the best faith in James’ sense of direction, but he wasn’t going to call the younger man out on it. They continued to move along, mostly in quiet, as the late afternoon sun dipped on down toward evening, and Harry began to wonder just how turned around they had gotten. “What are you going to name the egg, Harry?” 

“Oh—“ he looked down. “Uh,” 

“Well, I mean, it’s yours now, so it needs a good name.” James nodded, more to himself than to Harry. “Can’t have an egg without giving it a good name.” Harry half-smiled, and said, 

“How about Mr. Pickle?”

“Harry, so help me, if you even think about it, I’m going to come back there and kick your arse.” Harry laughed, and he hurried his steps to move in time with James, reaching out to take the other man’s hand.

“I’ve missed you something dreadful,” he confided, watching James’ handsome face twist as he made a particularly large step to avoid a big rock. “It feels like...I don’t know. It’s been so very long since I’ve seen you. I never thought I would see you again.” James squeezed his hand, smiled. 

“Well, I’m here now, so not to worry. We’ve got plenty of time to spend together in the wonderful privacy of the woods with only each other for company as we try to figure out where we’re going.” As they came to the bottom of the hill, the sun dipping behind the trees and the last few dregs of late-summer sunlight beginning to fade away into twilight, the younger man scratched his head and looked around, confused. “Where...where _are_ we going?”

“James,” Harry said, long-sufferingly, “Did you get us lost _again_? Is this going to be like Chicago all over again?

“Look,” James replied, the argument one long-rehashed, “That was the damn light rail’s fault, I knew _exactly_ where I was going.”

“That’s shit and you know it,” Harry shook his head, and he reached into his pocket to pull out his phone, and unlocked it. He paused, frowning.

No signal. He lifted his hand and phone into the air, and turned in a circle, the last hope of the damned. _Still_ no signal. “Shit,” Harry put his phone away, and pressed the corner of his glasses, opening a communications channel to Merlin. “Merlin? Can you get a signal reading on our location?”

The line was silent. Not even static buzz. Just...silent.

“We’re out of satellite range,” Harry said, at last, looking over at James. “So, I think this tops Chicago.” James rolled his eyes and muttered something—likely rude—under his breath that Harry didn’t catch.

“We go downhill until we hit a creek, then, and follow that downstream to a river. We’ve done it before, it won’t take too long.” 

“I can’t believe you got us lost _on the estate_ ,” Harry grouched, but continued after Lancelot, placing his feet ever more carefully in the growing darkness, falling over the forest from the sun, now set, and the night that now rose in the East.

[ Illustration done by the amazing [Mona](http://lloydoholic.tumblr.com/)! ]

 

  

It was truly dark before the landscape of trees changed. Harry’s arms were beginning to ache from holding up the egg for so long, and he was looking forward to finding _something_. It seemed remarkable that they hadn’t once seen any sign of life—they weren’t in _that_ rural a part of England. 

However, finally, out of the darkness that they were only successfully navigating due to the night vision on their glasses, there was a light. “Look at that!” James said, voice low. “Might be a road?”

“Worth a look,” Harry agreed, and they moved slowly, quietly, toward the light. Whatever it was, it wasn’t cars going past—it was steady, and bobbed occasionally, like it was moving with footsteps. As they got closer, between the trees Harry could hear laboured breathing and the distant, rhythmic _thud_ of something striking wood over and over again. “Might be a camper?” he said, quietly, and James’ shoulders ahead of him shrugged slightly.

“Farmer, maybe?” They picked their way near-silently toward the clearing, and arrived at the edge together, James just ahead of Harry.

There was an old man, chopping wood. He was wearing a threadbare black suit, patched at the elbows, and tied to his back was a bundle of thin-branched kindling. He was chopping at a tree that—for just a moment, when Harry saw it out the corner of his eye—looked like it had a face, pulled wide into an anguished, tortured scream. He looked at it again, however, and it was a normal tree. 

A trick of the light, he supposed.

“Excuse me?” James said, clearing his throat after a moment. “My partner and I have gotten ourselves completely lost—do you know the way to the Kingshorne Estate?” The man chopping wood jumped and turned around, brandishing the axe he held in his hands, and Harry gasped in surprise.

“ _Arthur?_ ” He said, shocked, and ahead of him, Chester King lowered his axe slightly, blinking at them.

“That’s not my name,” the man said, after a moment, and Harry relaxed slightly. No—it was a trick of the light, he could see now. Just a...remarkable resemblance. That was all.

“No, sorry, my apologies—you happen to look like our employer,” Harry managed at last, and James looked as nonplussed as he felt. “Our mistake. Regardless, we’ve found ourselves lost in these woods. Do you know how to get out of here?” 

Finally, the man lowered his axe the rest of the way, and he snorted. “What, relied on one of those Yankee maps and got yourselves lost instead of buying from the hard-working folk in these parts? You foreign people are all the same.” Harry resisted the urge to snap that being English did not necessarily mean he didn’t possess the same basic sense of direction as every other human being, but let it slide. 

If he had needed any hard proof that they were truly not dealing with Chester King, the fact that the man before them spoke with a thick Southern American accent basically confirmed that.

“Yes, I suppose so, that may well be the case. However, we very urgently need to find our way back to our estate, and you seem like you know the area well enough. Even if you could just point us in the direction of London we would be very grateful.” The man sniffed, and turned to finish chopping off the last branch that he had been working on when James had interrupted him, and then tucked it under his arm and leaned on his axe in lieu of a cane. 

“It’s not safe for you to be out here at night,” the man said, starting off slowly down the hill, following a well-worn path between the trees, and Harry and James glanced at each other before moving forward to follow him, Harry adjusting the egg to a better carrying position. “The Beast is on the prowl.” 

“The...Beast?” James asked, following just behind Harry. “Some kind of a...wolf?”

“No!” The man turned around, his face flushed with anger, and he snarled, “The _Beast!_ ” Harry almost misplaced a foot, and felt the egg wobble dangerously in his arms. Their guide hadn’t stopped moving, despite his anger. “Do you think being ignorant will help you, will protect you? No, he’ll take you just the same, all the easier because you’ll walk right into his trap!”

James edged significantly closer to Harry. “Do you think he’s all right?” James whispered, and Harry shrugged in confusion.

“Some kind of farmer’s superstition, I’m sure,” he replied, voice equally low. “Likely it was just some predator that made it into local myth.” The woods in rural England weren’t necessarily _safe_ , but they were safer than a lot of other places Harry had been alone in at night over the years. He wasn’t particularly worried about any Beast in these parts. They continued on in silence for some time, until the woodcutter grunted and took a fork in the road, going left. 

“You two can stay at my mill for the night,” he led them down a gravelly path that wound down the side of a steep hill that ended in a gulch filled with a bubbling brook, and Harry took the stepping stones over the river carefully, being sure that he didn’t misplace his feet and take a fall into the river. The egg made things awkward, but he didn’t want to make James carry it, as he wasn’t the one who had decided to bring it along. “In the morning, you’ll be on your way. It’s travellers that the Beast likes,” the woodsman hefted his lamp up slightly, pointing the way into the home portion of his mill. “And he’ll eat you nancy boys for breakfast.”

Lancelot laughed and shook his head. “I think we’ll be fine. I’m not too worried about any beasts.” The woodsman gave him a glowering stare, and then pushed the door into the house open. Harry ignored James’ posturing and stepped inside, into an old, dusty room with faded rugs on the uneven wood floor. The woodsman slammed the door shut the moment that James got over the threshold, and he threw shut a heavy wooden bolt and a second lock.

Stumping past Harry, who took a moment to ease down onto the divan by the stairs, the woodsman picked up two logs from the grate and tossed them into the fireplace, then threw in firestarters and lit a match, fumbling it around between the wood until the fire caught.

“Why not just use your sticks?” James asked, wandering around the space, taking stock of where he was. Honestly, being utterly lost had drained Harry more than he had expected, and he had chosen a spot where his back was covered and he could see any first-floor entrances. If James wanted to recon the whole building, he could go right ahead. 

“Edelwood isn’t for the _fire_ ,” The woodsman snarled, pressing a hand on top of his bundle. “It’s for the _oil._ Even children know that.” James paused, but didn’t say anything else as the woodsman shook his head and stood up, taking his lantern. “Don’t touch anything. I’ll come back after I grind the oil.”

And, with that, the man slammed out the second door on the first floor, leaving Galahad and Lancelot in utter silence. James looked at Harry, and then hastened over to sit next to him, easing his long legs down onto the divan. 

“Are you following anything that man says?” His hazel eyes kept flicking toward the door that the woodcutter had left out of, and Harry shook his head.

“Best not to question it, I think, my dear.” He set a hand on James’ knee, and squeezed it. “Instead, I believe we need to find the best way home.”

“Something about that woodcutter has me on edge,” Lancelot shifted closer, dropping his voice so only Harry could hear him. “It’s not just that he looks like Chester, although that’s odd enough. Harry, I know this sounds like superstition, but strange old man in the woods with an axe late at night, who invites strangers into his home, doesn’t...fit. With me.”

“No,” Harry replied, shaking his head, lips pursed. “Nor with me. If he has some kind of an ulterior motive, which I strongly believe he may, he’ll likely wait to spring a trap until we’re asleep. He’ll most likely just try to rob us—together, we could easily overpower him.”

“We could just show him we’re armed and let that be threat enough,”

“No, James.” Standing, tucking one hand into his pocket, Harry hefted his egg up under his right arm and went to the door, gently undoing the locks before he leaned his head outside and looked out at the forest.

The moon hung pregnant and full over the tree line, casting a yellow glow over the ground. To the right of the house, if he looked far enough, Harry could see the wheel of the mill turning in the water of the brook, and a light shining out one of the windows illuminated the dry, stunted grass that covered the ground.

From the distance came a noise. Not the great creaking and grinding of the mill, but a rustle-thud-whisper, the kind that no matter how well-armed or well-trained you were spoke to the native primordial fear in all mankind: the realisation of a predator.

Harry shifted back into the door, and James, as if sensing his tension, stepped closer, leaned over his shoulder to look out into the darkness. For a moment, neither of them moved.

“The Beast?” James asked, quiet. They remained frozen, taking in their environment. Harry finally reached up into his jacket with his free hand and pulled one of the pistols out from his shoulder holsters.

“Likely just something in the woods,” Harry replied, even as another one of those noises sounded, closer than before. Neither of them moved, Harry looking to the right and James to the left, back to front, shoulders pressed together, as the noises got closer.

From the trees at the edge of the gravel path, a branch snapped among a loud rustle of leaves, and Harry moved faster than he thought he would, hand shooting up as he took aim, unmoving, waiting, his breath held.

And then, with a twisted howling noise, the thing shot out of the trees and straight at him. Harry shouted in surprise, throwing James backward bodily with his weight, and kicked the door shut, but even then he wasn’t fast enough, trapping himself and Lancelot inside the house with one of the thing’s paws shoved in, grasping toward them, scrabbling and leaving great gouges on the hardwood floor. 

“Shoot it!” James said, and Harry grunted, leaning all his weight against the door to try and keep it out. “Harry!” 

“It’s pinned, you do it! If I move, it’ll be fucking on top of us!” James pushed past him, trying to get an aim at the twisting, snarling monster, but the moment it saw him it howled and threw its shoulders into the door. Harry pressed back, trying to keep it trapped despite its thrashing, but it was significantly larger and heavier, and on its third try it pushed Harry off the door with so much force he tripped and went down with a shout, twisting his body so that he landed hard, on his tailbone, instead of crushing the egg in his arms.

“Fucking Christ!” James shouted, and Harry was already sitting up, grabbing his pistol off of where it had been knocked out of his hand when he had fallen, and he turned back to find the younger man pinned under the bulk of perhaps the largest wolf he had ever seen. It was easily as long as James was tall, with thick, night-black fur and paws the size of grapefruits. It was drooling wildly on James’ face, and the other man was straining where he was trapped, pinned to the floor, his handgun knocked away. “Harry! For fuck’s sake, get it off me!” He was twisting, trying to get out, bucking up against the wolf, which just kept snarling.

It looked up at Harry, baring its teeth, and he felt a chill run all the way down his spine, the hair on the back of his neck raised on-edge, at its eyes. They were a horrifying amalgamation of colours, all of them so bright they glowed with some kind of monstrous inner light. White, in the middle, with blue and then a sickly, jaundiced yellow around the outside, and Harry had a moment where he lost control, shaking, and whispered, “Jesus Christ,” because this had to be the Beast, hadn’t it? A monster with teeth half again as long as his thumbs, with eyes that practically glowed, that sounded about right.

“Harry!” James shouted, and that snapped him out of it. Egg cradled between his thighs, Harry brought his pistol up and emptied three rounds between the wolf’s eyes, the crack of the gun incredibly, almost deafeningly, loud in the enclosed space of the house. Staring at him, the monster drooled black ichor from the wound, and then fell over collapsed sideways onto Lancelot’s legs. “Fucking, fuck me,” the younger man wiggled, frantically wiping at his face and dragging his legs free of the corpse. “What the shit is that?”

“The Beast, I presume,” Harry replied, handing the younger man the egg as he stood and stepped over, pushing at the wolf’s body with the toe of his shoe. More black ichor was draining from its body, oozing out of its fur and into foul-smelling puddles of oil on the floor, and Harry made a face, stepping back before it could get on his shoes. “I can well understand why the woodcutter was frightened of this monster, but frankly, we’ve dealt with worse.” 

“At least it wasn’t rabid,” James replied, scooping the egg up into his arms and coming closer, examining the corpse from the same healthy distance Harry was keeping. “Frankly, one run-in with a killer rabid racoon is enough for me.” Harry nodded mutely in agreement, and they stood there together for a moment longer in silence before the other door into the house slammed open and the woodcutter stumbled in, lamp clutched to his chest and eyes wild in his face.

“What did you do?” He shouted, pointing one shaking finger at Harry and James. Harry mutely gestured to the oozing corpse, like that would make it clear what had happened, and the woodcutter stared at it, slowly lowering his lantern.

“I believe we’ve taken care of your Beast problem, sir.” Harry cocked his head, smiling, and the woodcutter practically swelled with bluster and barked out a biting laugh and shook his head.

“You think a _dog_ is the Beast?” As he said it, the rest of the ooze slid free, soaking through the floorboards without leaving a mark, revealing a small figure that stood up after a moment, shaking its head. “You think you can kill it with—with a _bullet,_ like some Yankee? You foreigners are all the same.” And, at that moment, the dog stood up and looked at Harry and barked.

“Mr. Pickle?” Harry whispered, almost dropping his gun in surprise. “No, you can’t—“ and, unbelievably, his—very certainly deceased—dog barked in happiness and ran over and started scrabbling at Harry’s leg, practically crying in happiness out of seeing Harry. Fumbling his pistol back into its holster, Harry knelt and wrapped his arms around his dog, buried his face in Mr. Pickle’s soft ruff of fur, and sighed in utter happiness, laughing. “Oh, my dear sir!” After the day he’d had, Harry wasn’t going to question it too much, wasn’t going to push on why his dear dog had been returned to him after so may years, and after a moment, he stood up, Mr. Pickle tucked under one arm, and he smiled, first at the woodcutter, and then at James. “No, I certainly think he isn’t the beast.”

“Made a damn mess,” said the woodcutter, stumping back the way he’d come. “Don’t touch anything more!” He shouted at the two of them and slammed the door behind him, leaving James and Harry in silence with Mr. Pickle.

“This...” James began, hesitantly, “Doesn’t seem right to me. Harry, I know you love him, but he’s been _dead_ , for years.”

“James, I might not have the slightest clue what is going on, but for once in my life, I am not going to look a damn gift horse in the mouth." James stared at Harry a moment longer, mouth half-open, and then closed it and shook his head, sighing.

Galahad, apparently, had finally shut him up, at least on that topic. Without the woodcutter there, having left for the Lord only knew what reason, Harry hesitated for a moment longer before he sighed and closed his eyes. "I'm sorry—I shouldn’t have snapped. This is all just so..." Harry sat down, heavily, and Mr. Pickle rolled immediately into his lap, panting happily. "Surreal, James. It hardly seems like any of this is real. I don't remember a forest anything like this near the estate, and who on earth could that man be? He’s the spitting fucking image of Arthur." 

"I haven't got a clue," James said, at last, rubbing a hand over his forehead. "Not much we can do now, though, except sit here and wait for him to come back, I suppose." Harry furrowed his brow, and rubbed at the throbbing ache over his left eye—a headache formed, no doubt, from the incessant absurdity that had plagued this entire afternoon and evening. 

They would be fine, come morning. 

"Shall we turn in, then?" 

"I'll take first watch." James smiled at Harry, squeezed his shoulder. "You're looking pretty worn, Har." Harry grunted, but stood up, scooping Mr. Pickle up under one arm, and the egg in the other.

"Do you mind terribly if I take the divan?"

"No. Go get some rest. I'll wake you for your watch." James looked worried, and Harry didn't blame him: the headache behind and above his eye really was pressing, but nothing that a little sleep wouldn't help, no doubt. Especially with James, and now Mr. Pickle, there.

It had certainly been a strange, almost impossible day, but he had lived odder ones in his life, and he wasn't going to question this whole experience too much. With Lancelot settled into the armchair, turned so that he could look out the half-ruined door and the window at the dark lawn outside, Harry stared at the ceiling, Mr. Pickle snuffling by his feet, long past the time that he intended to go to sleep, mind caught up in contemplations and worries—fretting—about what today meant.

How long, he wondered, the egg warm under his arm, heating up along with his own body temperature, would it be until they got home?

 

 

The next morning, James woke him up at watch change and Harry blearily switched places with the younger man, rubbing his eyes and yawning as he settled in for a watch, Mr. Pickle happily kipping with James still while Harry thoughtfully ran his fingers over the smooth shell of the egg. 

"I wonder what might be in you," he asked it, quietly, still unsure why they had needed to bring it with them, and how James had somehow decided it was Harry's responsibility alone, "When all is said and done?"

It was soon after, his thoughts still a morass, that the door into the other room of the mill thudded open and the woodcutter stepped through. James almost instantaneously woke up, his hand already ducking into the folds of his coat for his pistol as the old man coughed, shook his head at them. 

"You Yankess are getting out of my hair today, one way or another." Galahad paused and glanced at his companion, who raised one eyebrow, but said nothing. "It's only safe to travel during daylight; I hope you boys are smart enough to know that much." The woodcutter bustled past them, opening the door onto the lawn, dew-covered and lanced in dawn light. Framed as he was by the half-open door, he looked even more strikingly like Chester King, until Harry began to think that maybe—his headache still not fully abated—his eyes were playing tricks on him. But no: a Southern American farmer who seemed to have stepped fully-formed out of some period film was certainly not Chester King.

“Come along with me,” the man said, gruffly, and Harry got to his feet, grimacing at the spike of pain above his eye from the change in position, but it quieted down afterward as he and James followed the man out into the clearing. Mr. Pickle trotted along at James’ heels, and as soon as they were outside he happily ran about, snorting, until he found a good stump upon which to take his morning piss. 

Hunting in his pockets, the woodcutter eventually pulled out a map and turned so that James and Harry could lean over and get a better look.

“This is where we are,” he gestured at the map with one cracked nail, and then traced a path along over a riverbed, up a hill, and to a town some miles over. “You should be able to reach them by sunset, to have a safe place to stay. They can point you on from there.”

Harry, still staring intently at the map, cleared his throat. “Pardon my asking, but...that map does _not_ look like England.” The woodcutter looked up at him, eyebrows drawn together, and frowned.

“Of course it doesn’t,” said the man, matter-of-fact. “This ain’t England. This is The Unknown.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of all, to anybody unfamiliar with the american civil war, [here's a quick useful notes page](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar) which will probably clear up a lot of stuff in this fic that otherwise might be easy to miss
> 
> beta'd, spaghetti wall'ed, and crafted alongside the cuilean horrorterror mind of [chuchisushi](archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/pseuds/chuchisushi), who deserves a great deal of thanks, as well as [thetealord](archiveofourown.org/users/thetealord/pseuds/thetealord) who puts up with, frankly, a lot, and did so for this too.
> 
> my absolutely FANTASTIC artists have posted their art and you can check it out at these links [first](http://lloydoholic.tumblr.com/post/135100263304/a-kingsman-big-bang-illustration-for-the-amazing) [second](http://lloydoholic.tumblr.com/post/135100321779/a-kingsman-big-bang-illustration-for-the-amazing) and [here](http://waltermittie.tumblr.com/post/135116448412). i'll be embedding it once we get to those chapters, so i'm looking forward to putting it all in context!
> 
> check them out on tumblr [here](http://waltermittie.tumblr.com/) and [here](http://lloydoholic.tumblr.com/)!


	2. when johnny comes marching home again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [when johnny comes marching home again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIVIFLo0uE)

“This is a new low,” Harry said, resolutely not looking at James as he stomped up the path, the egg bouncing against his collarbone. “I don’t know how this happened, but—“

“It was an _accident_ ,” the younger man wheedled, pleading, behind him. “How was I supposed to know we weren’t in England?”

“Last I checked, James, we were in England! And now we’re not, and frankly, if I wasn’t fucking livid with you I’d be exceedingly curious about how you damn well managed that!” James, behind him, sighed, but didn’t press him on it. “And now here we are, in rural _somewhere_ , with shit directions and not even a bloody _map_ and an egg, and my until-recently-deceased dog, with no cell phone signal, and no satellite signal! When Merlin finds out, I am _not_ saving your ass from this!”

“Jesus Bloody Christ, Harry, I get it. You can stop railing on me.” Harry looked over his shoulder at where James was walking. “We’ll get home, and that’s all that matters, right?” Harry clenched his jaw, teeth grinding, but stopped yelling at the other man—for now. “How much further do you think it is to where the woodcutter said?” 

Grimacing, Harry looked forward, and did slow his steps somewhat. “It shouldn’t be too much further. We’ve been making very good time, so I shouldn’t be surprised if we came upon it quite soon actually—“ As they crested the rise of the hill, Harry’s words died in his throat and he trailed off, staring down below at the stretch of grassland ahead of them.

It was a great prairie, with grass the slowly-drying green of the deep summer. There was, indeed, a town below them—it was not of solid buildings, though, but tents, shored up together, ragtag and bedraggled. And, all around them, stretching on along the prairie in almost all directions as far as the eye could see, mound after mound.

“What in the hell—“ James said, stopping behind Harry. Mr. Pickle snuffled, confused, at the air, as the three of them (and the egg) stood there, looking down. “Is this...some kind of battlefield?”

“It certainly looks the part.” Harry hesitated. “It has to have been here for some time, if he knew to direct us here. We at least may be able to stay for the night.” After their interaction with the way that Mr. Pickle had been the night before, frankly, Harry was starting to believe that whatever madness had made the Woodcutter truly, deeply fear the monstrous Beast may have been an honest one, and not just an old wives tale.

“I’ve never liked battlefields,” James said, quietly, his emotive face impassive for the moment. “Too much...memory.”

 

  

They arrived at the tent city just as the sun was starting to stain orange with the sunset, Harry calling Mr. Pickle to heel as they picked their way around smouldering campfires and past ramshackle hospital tents, looking for someone to speak to. Eventually, they stumbled upon a group of men in grey, bloodstained uniforms cooking morosely in a large, communal firepit.

One of them looked up at Galahad and Lancelot, in their immaculate uniforms, and tapped his hat back, measuring them with his eyes. “Can I help ya’ll?” He asked, after a moment. He had a ruddy face, with ragged red hair and a thick American accent, clearly from the Deep South, his vowels rolling like the rock of the sea. 

“We were in fact about to ask you if you could,” Harry said. “My name is Galahad, and this is my partner Lancelot. We seem to have _grievously_ lost our way on our way back to our office, and we were wondering if we might camp with you for the night. The last person we met gave us directions to here, and told us not to travel at night, and we thought it best to behove his warning.”

The man with the tapped-up cap paused, ran his tongue over his yellowed teeth, and slowly raised his eyebrows. “Pardon my saying so, gentlemen, but you sure don’t talk like, or dress like, pretty much any other traveller around these parts. It’s been a mighty long time since we’ve seen anybody talk or dress as nice as you.” Perhaps he didn’t intend for it to be a threat, but after what Harry had lived through, he heard it as one. He furrowed his brow, and the pulsing started over his eye again: as if to tell him that his suspicions were good ones.

“As I said, we are _quite_ a long way from home. We have no money, but we would be happy to barter for a safe place by your campfire for the night.” James looked over at him, hissing between his teeth, and Harry promptly stepped on his toe.

One of the men in uniform, a jocular-looking fellow with a shaved head and a scraggly beard looked hungrily at Harry’s egg. “Whatcha take for that there egg?” For a moment, his blood rushed in his ears, and his heart dropped to his stomach. 

He—he couldn’t _eat_ it. Harry might not remember why, or where he was even supposed to take it, but the egg, _his_ egg, was an incredibly precious object. That was—absolutely not.

“Not for sale, I am afraid.” He managed to choke out after a moment, when he found the words. “I am sure we would have something else we might be able to offer?” He hesitated. These men were, very clearly, soldiers. Their uniforms might be slapdash, mismatched, and very badly worn, but they sat with the pride of a man of arms. “Perhaps I might be able to interest you in this instead?” Sliding the egg into the crook of his right elbow, Harry reached into his suitcoat and pulled out the pistol he had used the night before, with three rounds gone, and gestured to Lancelot to take the egg, which he did, before he hesitated, and looked back at the soldiers.

“Do you, perhaps, have something I could use for firing practice?” One of the men, a portly man with thin brown hair, got up and took an empty can over to a the fence posts around the tent city and placed it atop. Harry showed the rest of the men the gun, and then took aim and shot the can straight through.

Several of them whistled. Harry held it up. “This for myself, with another ammunition cartridge, and one from my companion as well, in trade for food and to spend a night at your fire.” The soldiers looked at him in open awe. “I trust that will be a fair enough trade.”

“Boy howdy,” said the red-headed man, clearly their leader. “You sure got my vote. I’m Sergeant Green, and these are my boys. You can stay with us, no questions asked.”

Harry smiled.

 

 

After they had traded over their guns, James just sat there dejectedly, tossing a bone for Mr. Pickle. “Now what,” he said, while Harry cleaned his other pistol. “We have one gun and one ammo cartridge, and we have no idea where we are.” 

“What else would we give them?” Harry asked. “They wanted to eat my egg, and I don’t think whatever little cash we have would be particularly useful in this situation, given that we don’t even know what currency they use.” James grimaced, but said nothing, which meant he knew that Harry was right. “Besides,” Harry said, tone mollifying, “What are we going to use them for here, anyway? We aren’t on a mission, and as far as I can tell, nobody seems to be dangerous to us that we’d have a good reason to use force.” Kingsman never condoned taking a life unnecessarily, and given the lack of technology that the war-torn region they had found themselves in seemed to be facing, almost any wound that they left with their guns would have been fatal. 

“The Beast,” James said, not looking up from where he was playing with Mr. Pickle. “We might need them to shoot the Beast.”

“I thought you didn’t think that was real.” 

“I just feel _naked_ without them, Har. I think it’s a bad fucking idea, is all.” Galahad snorted.

“I think you’re just blowing things out of proportion.” 

They fell asleep late that night curled up by the coals of the cooking fire, Mr. Pickle standing watch, and they awoke at the grey, humid light of false dawn to groggily take rough-ground coffee and hard tack from the soldiers, who shared it on the promise that the two men would help them out with the day’s work in trade for the rations.

Considering that between them they had no food left, the offer—while not ideal—was not one they could pass up. Travelling without food was an option, and one they had dealt with before, it was best to keep themselves eating as long as possible.

It was a bit after dawn that Sergeant Green and his boys loaded up a cart covered in tarps, and Harry and James hopped onto the running board along with the rest of them, riding away from the camp and out into the great barren plain that they were camping against the edge of. The ground was marked with weeks-old grown over foot treads and cannon lines, cart tracks criss-crossing here and there along with the battle scars. 

So many battle scars. 

“How did we not hear about this?” Galahad said quietly, just loud enough that Lancelot could hear, and the other man shrugged.

“We’ve both been almost non-stop on missions. We’d miss something eventually; looks like it was this.”

“I suppose...” Still, Harry couldn’t shake the feeling deep in his bones that there was something off here. Something that they were both missing, that neither of them had put together. However, the Unknown was a very straightforward place, so maybe he was just seeing ghosts.

As the cart started to come to a halt, a good distance from the camp they had been in, Mr. Pickle started barking, and he hopped down out of Harry’s arms to run the last few feet to the edge of the great pit they were coming up to, and then he went absolutely mad, practically vibrating out of his skin with how much he was barking.

“Mr. Pickle!” Harry shouted, horrified at his dog’s ill-temper, and then the scent hit him full-on in the face. James wretched, almost falling off the edge of the cart as they stopped, and Harry reeled, coughing as he pressed his hand over his mouth.

“Here!” Said Sergeant Green as he hopped down off of the driver’s level, handing the two Kingsmen old, ratty handkerchiefs. “You boys and your nice clothes don’t look like they’d be much good for breathing. Tie these around your noses and mouths—and you’ll wanna get your pup there out of the way, I reckon. Here, hop off.” They did so, and Sergeant Green pulled the tarp off the back of the cart, revealing that under a thick layer of old grass, dried flowers, and fire charcoal from the night before, meant to tamp down the scent, there were bodies.

Almost a dozen. 

“Jesus bloody Christ,” Harry swore, in surprise, and quickly knotted the offered scarf around his face. “You could have _warned_ us.” 

“Then you’d want off of body duty,” Green replied, lifting up his cap and shoving his red hair back under it. “Unfortunately, that’s what the folks at the top left us here to do.” He gestured back at the camp where they had come from, and shrugged. “Care for the wounded, and if they don’t survive, bury what’s left. Not the shift anybody wants, but some poor soul has to do it.”

“Fuck,” James coughed, wretching on the ground as he struggled to get the cloth over his nose and mouth, while Mr. Pickle came trotting back over to sit next to Harry, plaintive. “You want us to _help_ you?”

“Fair’s fair, that’s a trade.” The Sergeant looked at Lancelot, and raised his eyebrows. “Why, you chicken?”

“No, he just has a weak stomach.” Harry sighed, and walked further away before he pointed at the ground. “Stay here, my dear gherkin. And watch the egg.” Mr. Pickle barked, understanding, and sat down slightly curled up so that Harry could place the egg against him, so it would still be warm, before he hesitated and then took off his coat, wrapped the egg up, and came back over, undoing his cufflinks and rolling up his sleeves. “Come along, Lancelot. We promised to help.”

“God,” James replied, eyes red and watering, “Do I hate you.”

  

 

For the entire morning they laboured, Harry and James plus the Sergeant and three other men, lifting the grass mats and dirt off of the communal grave, before they slung the new bodies in and piled it back up. Then a second cart came, and then a third, and despite the number of hands the work never got any easier, until all of the men had acquiesced to shedding their coats and working in their sweat-soaked shirtsleeves, Harry’s shoulder holsters biting into his back from the repetitive motion of shovelling.

They finished about lunch, and they all passed around a bowl of some kind of thick, heavy stew that—despite the low, muggy heat that sank wet into your bones—was both filling and rejuvenating, and the Sergeant at the end handed Harry and James each a canteen full of water. After a moment of hesitation, he passed over a third one as well.

“You two Yankee boys look like you didn’t come prepared for...whatever it is you’re doing.” Harry glanced at James, and then looked back.

“We merely lost our way, I’m afraid. We’re trying to get home. Thank you, for the food and the water. We can’t repay you enough.”

“Those guns and your hands today are more than enough.” He smiled, and then knocked back the brim of his hat, and turned to look out across the great scarred plain they stood on. “If you keep going that way, for about two, maybe three, days, you’ll come across a small old town. They’ve got a church, lovely bunch of Christians all, and a train station. Can’t promise it’ll help you, but it’s something.” He put his hands in his pockets. “Best of luck to ya’ll. You’re gonna need it, out here.”

“Thank you,” Harry said, honestly, for both himself and James. They retrieved Mr. Pickle and the egg, and with a final wave of thanks to the Sergeant and his men, set out across the great plain, the great yellow sun like a running yolk beating down on their heads with bone-melting warmth, dying yellowed grass crunching under their feet as the scent of decaying bodies and high summer filled their ears, the aching whine of cicadas filling the air as a long, constant scream into the atmosphere.


	3. down to the river to pray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [down to the river to pray](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Eu85pZNoWY)

They walked during the high summer days, drinking until their canteens were empty and then they seemingly weren’t thirsty any more, and then more walking, Mr. Pickle excitedly rooting about in the grass until he would come up, barking triumphantly as he leapt after a grasshopper.

“This would be a lot easier if we could travel at night,” James said, halfway through the afternoon of the third day, as far ahead of them the sketchy shapes of a town began to solidify at last. “This heat is killer.”

“I don’t want to risk that again,” Harry replied, teeth grit as he moved resolutely onward. “I don’t know about you, my dear, but if what had Mr. Pickle _wasn’t_ the Beast, then I don’t want to take on the real thing with only one clip of bullets.”

“I hate to be the voice of non-shooting reason,” James replied, slightly out of breath as they climbed a rise in the plain, “But for once, I think that might not be the answer.” Harry snorted.

Coming from James “Shoot First ask Questions Later” Spencer, that was a bit rich. But he didn’t press it, and instead just trekked ever onward.

“I’d rather not find out,” he said, at last, as they crested the rise and found themselves looking downward on the small town that sprawled below them, that they had seen from a distance just a few minutes before. Made up of wood houses, scattered maybe two dozen around a central square that housed an old brick train station that had tracks that ran all the way out along the horizon in both directions, as far as the eye could see, it culminated closest to them in a white clapboard church, the windows filled with old-fashioned stained glass.

“This looks promising,” James said, slightly cheerier, and he set off down the hill, Mr. Pickle running along before him, while Harry followed more carefully, the egg tucked into his arms. It had begun feeling heavier, lately—like whatever was inside was growing, at last. “What day is it?”

“Date, or day of the week?” James grunted as he showed Harry around a dip in the ground.

“Day of the week.” 

“Sunday, I think? Why?” Harry looked up as they edged down toward the bottom of the hill, and James nodded.

“Because then we won’t have to look far for the residents,” he pointed at the church. “Chances are, they’re all right there.” The younger man set off for the front of the church, and Harry came along a moment later, footsteps hesitant.

Something...felt off. “James,” he said, catching up to the younger man, slowing to make Lancelot match his pace. “I don’t believe this is a good idea.”

“What, the church?” James looked forward at it. “You can wait outside.”

“Yes the church, but...” Harry chose not to finish his thought because frankly, it sounded absurd, even to him. A hate group, in this small railway station? That seemed not only unlikely, but perhaps impossible. “It’s nothing. You should go in. The heat is killing my head—I think I’ll just take a rest.” James looked at him for a moment longer, and then decided not to push on it, and while the younger man walked up to the door and pushed inside, Harry came closer to the building.

This close, he could hear song coming out of the church. It was lilting and every singer had a thick, Southern accent. They were going home, they sang, and Harry sank down onto the bench pressed up against the sun-weathered white planks of the chapel wall. Mr. Pickle settled down next to him, panting in the high summer heat, and he held the egg tight as he closed his eyes, sighed, and leaned back against the church.

Harry didn’t know how much time passed. His head swam, pressure both constricting it and pounding. His eyes ached. It had been a long time since he’d been in this kind of heat, and this kind of sun, and it was catching up to him.

Dozing, when he felt a hand on his shoulder, Harry started slightly and murmured, “I kind of miss the old balaclava and gas mask look from Afghanistan, after this summer sun.”

“Excuse me?” Said a rough woman’s voice, and Harry startled immediately awake, staring up at her—how had he let his guard down? She wore a long, dark skirt, a prim blouse, and she had waving blonde hair that fell to tuck behind her shoulders. Her pinched face was slightly creased, and Harry cleared his throat.

“I...it was nothing. I thought you were my—” Even Harry didn’t know exactly what James was to him any more. Partner, maybe, but that had other connotations. “Companion.” She smiled, the lines of her mouth and forehead softening.

“He sent me out to get you. Come in out of this sun.” Harry looked up at her, and for a sudden, jarring moment he saw the gristly remains of her skull and brain, her face blown open, her pale shirt stained with blood.

And then it was gone, with an almost ice-cold pulse in his veins, his whole body prickling all over.

He felt sick to his stomach, and it was like someone had taken a pipe to his skull. For an alarming moment, already rising to his feet, Harry swayed, clutching his head with one hand and the egg with the other. “Sir?” Said the woman, grasping his arm. “Oh, you had better come inside, dear. You’re looking fair heat struck.” Mumbling some vague thanks, Harry didn’t have the strength to object to being dragged inside, or to voice his concerns, and when his vision cleared he found himself laid out flat on a pew, James’ face hovering over his.

“Are you all right?” Harry blinked, pressed a hand to his head.

“Heatstroke, I suppose. Merlin will have a field day about this.” James watched him with shrewd eyes, but leaned back eventually, clearing Harry’s suddenly-limited field of vision as his left eye spun.

The inside of the church was just as humble as the outside, but the number of people bustling about was remarkable—more, it seemed, than could possibly be housed in the town that had sprung up around it. The woman from outside the church came bustling back, and she pressed a ladle full of cool water into Harry’s hands, and didn’t move until he’d drunk it.

“This is crowded,” Harry managed, at last, once she had let him sit up, the migraine receding, and Mr. Pickle nosed worriedly at his hand, the egg heavy on his lap. “Do you always have such large Sundays?” 

“Oh, yes.” The woman smiled, and set a bowl of grits in his lap. It was lukewarm, and growing slightly tacky, but Harry dug in, grateful. “The train stops here Sundays, you saw. Folks like you boys always come by to visit before they get on, and go off to whatever awaits in the great beyond, given that it only runs the one way now, and not both, like it used to.” She looked up and Harry glanced up at her.

Out of the corner of his eye, the walls were coated in blood. The windows were shattered. Her dead, empty eyes kept staring. His head kept pounding. The pastor, walking by in the back of the church, had a wooden pike through his skull and he was bleeding out his mouth. Harry blinked, the pastor laughed. He rubbed his right eye, because his left felt. Fuzzy.

“I can’t wait to go home someday,” she said, and there was a bone-deep longing in her voice that deeply unsettled Harry. She spoke like it was destined—like someday, he too would ride the train all the way to its last stop.

 

 

The churchpeople introduced Harry and James to a small contingent of soldiers, in mixed grey and blue uniforms, all of whom were taking the train. “Bound for the promised land,” one of them, with a lopsided grin said. “Not quite the home you folks are headed for, but we’ll all get there in the end.” They sang a great many songs, the lilting of voices raised in worship acting as a backdrop of constant, low buzzing to Harry’s aching head. James, taking care of the job Harry couldn’t do, canvassed everyone for information. He laughed with the little old man whose eyes had frozen wide and couldn’t get off the pew (but kept walking), and helped the man who had fallen out the window with tips for caring for a rambunctious daughter.

 As the sun sunk lower, and the quality of light through the simple coloured squares of the lead-edged stained glass went from clear and white to a deeper, thicker, egg-yolk yellow, the woman with the gaping head wound who kept smiling, lovely, came over to Harry.

“I asked a few of the other women, and we want you to have this.” She set a basket in his lap. “We used to use it to carry about our darning, but frankly, with that great big egg, I think you need it more than we do.” In his arms, the egg was warm and heavy and practically pulsing with life, and Harry glanced down at it, and then back up at her. “You ought to give it a good name, you know. The _right_ name. You can’t let it hatch without naming it.”

“I don’t feel like I can do it justice,” Harry confided, although he wasn’t sure why, or even quite where the thought came from. “Like, perhaps, it’s too good for me.”

“You sell yourself short.” She smiled. “Your friend is leaving—you’d better go. You can only catch the train properly once. Don’t want to miss it.”

“Har, come on!” Turning, Harry saw that James was standing by the door of the church, waving at him to come along, and Harry hesitated before he pushed to his feet, head just pulsing, not pounding. Mr. Pickle, with a few triumphant barks, raced off to join Lancelot.

Harry took a few steps out of the pew he was in, and then abruptly turned back to the woman, holding the basket she had given him. “I am,” he began, “Most...sincerely sorry. I just wanted to apologise.”

She looked at him, with plain brown eyes, in a plain round face, pinched with the old anguish of a mother, and her smile was little and sad—like she understood just what he meant, when he himself didn’t. 

“There ain’t no reason to be. You did the best you could. Go catch your train—and take care of that egg. Give it a good name for me.”

“I will,” Harry promised, utterly earnestly. He wasn’t sure why, but he left the church lighter, looser— _forgiven._


	4. little black train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [little black train](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHdDjdTpN3c)

They walked to the train station as the sunk sank lower and lower on the horizon, going from a soft, yolky orange-yellow to the red of heated metal, and then on down into the last few rays of white light and darkness, twilight falling rapidly over the wide-open plains of the Unknown. Their footsteps sent up dust in the hard-packed town streets, and they climbed the steps up onto the train platform at last. 

On the benches, paint peeling from exposure and weathering, metal rusting with age, sat a handful of men in patched grey and blue uniforms. Some sat together, some sat apart. A few had bandages still wrapped around old injuries. One pair of men, clasping hands like lovers reunited after years apart, kept laughing. Despite their mismatched uniforms and the way the other men watched them with naked jealousy or disgust, they seemed perfectly happy. They had even traded hats—a blue body, a grey hat. A grey hat, a blue body.

Looking around until he found a bench with room for them both, Harry gestured and he and James went to sit down alongside an older man, grizzled moustache and beard singed as if by gunfire, scowling at everyone all around them. His blue uniform was badly stained—brown, mostly. Mud, maybe. Or blood.

“You boys certainly are the odd ducks out,” he said, not looking at them, still staring off down the tracks, watching for the train. “A little young, don’t you think?” Harry blinked, and looked about—some of the men waiting with them couldn’t be older than twenty, if that. “They’ve certainly updated the uniforms since my day.”

“We aren’t enlisted,” James said, and then looked at Harry. “He used to be, years ago.” Harry shook his head.

“I was a combat surgeon, James. Rather different, I should think.”

“Still enlisted,” said the older man, huffing through his moustache. “It’s boys like you that make a difference. Save lives. I’m glad that there are more of you now.”

“I,” Harry began, and then thought better of it, and finished, “Thank you.” He’d not been in the Royal Marines long before he was recruited into Kingsman, but he still considered those days with pride. Had he not been pulled into a different kind of service for Queen and Country, he would have happily stayed there for the rest of his life. 

“How much longer until you think the train will come?” James had settled in, comfortable waiting—which was unusual, for him, given his usual boundless, restless energy. Harry, conversely, felt both lethargic and oddly unable to sit still, like he was about to vibrate out of his skin. The fact that his head kept pulsing certainly wasn’t helping him concentrate. 

“Oh, it should be soon,” the man stroked his chin, scratching at his beard, sand and dirt coming out around his yellow, cracked nails. For a moment, Harry saw the skeleton there, the long-decayed skin and uniform giving way to a yellowed, sun-weathered skeleton. “We’ve been waiting for a long time. I can’t imagine it’ll be much longer.”

As if to emphasise his words, there was a distant scream—the whistle, still a few miles off. However, the men all started to gather what few things that they had brought with them and stood to wander over to the edge of the platform, staring hopefully off down the tracks toward the distance where the whistle had come from. When the first one spotted it, a young boy certainly not older than fifteen, he shouted in triumph and the rest sent up a cheer. 

The old man next to them slowly lurched to his feet, and looked back over at Harry with skeletal eye sockets, empty. “The train only goes one way, lad. There’s no way back if you ride to the last stop. Are you sure you want to get on?”

“Of course,” James interjected, glancing at Harry to back him up. “We’re trying to get home. This is faster than walking, isn’t it?”

“I wasn’t asking you,” the man scowled, skeletal disapproval on his knitted-bone brow. “You have to ride it, one way or another. You’ll reach the last stop whether you want to or not.” James looked blanched and pale, and Harry cleared his throat.

“He’s right,” Harry said, coming to the other man’s rescue. “We’re needed at the estate very urgently. If we have to walk, who knows how long it might be? Sooner rather than later is the best situation for us.” 

The old soldier continued to stare at him, and then shrugged.

“Your choice.” When he said the words Harry’s skull pulsed, and he gasped for breath, pressed a hand over his left eye, grimacing. The pain was getting worse, it felt like—not better. From out of the haze that was clouding his vision as the pressure in his head mounted, he felt James’ hands on his elbows.

“Har,” the younger man sounded very far away. “Har, come on. Let me have the egg, you need to get up. The train’s here.” His words were waterlogged and heavy, but Harry nodded, stumbling to his feet, counting on James’ strong arms to keep him upright. “Come on, you old git.”

“Ha,” Harry managed, drily, stumbling after James as they moved slowly across the platform. His feet were oddly uncoordinated, and he kept stumbling. He would have fallen without James there to support him, and what seemed an interminable time later he felt his feet catch on the edge of the train car.

The train whistle, when it took off, screamed like a siren, a ringing phone coming off the hook. It screamed and screamed, and the pain in his head kept mounting, until it felt like his eye was going to come out—or he would take it out, he’d claw it out with his own fingers. 

Someone was screaming, and Harry belatedly realised that it was him.

It was very dark, and he was unconscious before his body hit the ground.

 

 

When Harry awoke, head pillowed on soft-stitched wool, warmed by the body under it, he was looking out the open door of an old-time boxcar, the wood weathered so far that it no longer had any colour left in it at all. Outside, the endless yellowed fields of the Unknown flipped past, and above it all the stars in Creation wheeled, speeding past and somehow staying perfectly still. They twinkled, soft but endlessly bright, in the great dark cloak that stitched together the night sky. Just below the edge of the boxcar door hung the moon, heavy and white and pregnantly full. At the edges, it was tinged blue, just like the darkness of the night.

“Harry,” James’ voice was quiet in his ear, fingers light on his shoulder. “You awake down there?” The body he was laying on shifted slightly, and Harry made a quiet, pained noise. “Hold on just a second,” James murmured, and his head lifted slightly, then resettled, this time on two warm things. James’ legs, probably. 

The younger man leaned over him, and Harry blinked at him. The left side of his vision was greyed out, and he couldn’t see clearly out that eye—just halos of light and pulsing, bright colours. He covered it with one shaking hand, and blinked at James with his right one.

For a moment, when James smiled, Harry saw a line down the centre of his face, thin and precise and perfectly symmetrical. He felt his gorge rise—why? Then it was gone.

“You had me worried. You wouldn’t stop screaming, and then you just passed out.” Harry grunted, quietly. “I can’t even remember the last time you had a migraine like that.” Harry shrugged—it seemed words were beyond him, his tongue leaden and heavy in his mouth. His chest felt heavy and cold, and he couldn’t move. His limbs seemed all almost beyond him. James knew him well enough to just keep talking—he’d been there when Harry had woken in the infirm _plenty_ of times. “You were out for a couple hours. We’ve passed a few stops, but the tracks just go on forever. Honestly, I don’t even know where we are any more. The egg and Mr. Pickle are fine.”

Harry managed a wan smile to show his thanks. For a time longer he lay there, until the pounding in his head was a bit better, and then he slowly sat up on his own and shifted to look out the door of the boxcar at the scenery travelling past.

It was beautiful, in a still and silent way. Almost too beautiful—like something out of a film, and not real life. Like it was begging him to come and run into the endless, wheeling stars.

“Here,” James shifted into the corner of his vision, coming over from his right side, since Harry still had his left eye covered. He pushed the basket, and the egg, back into Harry’s arms, and then turned to sit like Harry was. Together, their legs hanging down over the edge of the door, the wind whipping their trouser legs, they watched the scenery run by.

“It’s so beautiful out here,” James said. “I don’t think anybody would ever believe it.”

“No,” Harry replied. They fell once more into companionable silence, until Harry finally said, “What if we can’t find our way home?”

“What, _you_ , giving up?” There was actual horror in James’ voice as he looked back over at Harry. “We’ll get back. They can live without us for a few days, don’t you think?”

“It feels so much longer than a few days,” Harry shook his head. “It feels like...weeks. Months. Years. Sometimes, this doesn’t even feel real. I don’t know if we’ll ever get back.” Harry shook his head. “I’m talking nonsense.”

“It is lonely out here,” James replied. “Just us. Without Merlin, or anyone keeping an eye on us. We’ll be fine, though. We’ve managed long enough to give up now. There’s always got to be a way back if we try.”

Harry shifted, and was opening his mouth to reply when the egg in its basket on his lap shifted. Since he was only holding it with one hand, Harry wasn’t quick enough, and it toppled over and off of his lap and out of his grasp so fast that all he could do was shout in surprise.

“Eggsy, no!” Harry didn’t even think—he just let instinct drive him on. He dove, throwing his hands out toward the basket.

“Harry!” James screamed, and Mr. Pickle was barking wildly in the distance. James’ fingers grasped, slipping as they tried to catch onto Harry’s coat. He didn’t get a tight enough hold, though, and with a second shout James went spilling out of the edge of the boxcar along with Harry, wrapped right around his basket. Mr. Pickle, wildly barking, dove out after them, and together one after another the three of them hit the ground hard, Harry desperately protecting the egg with his body.

_DON’T GO WHERE I CAN’T FOLLOW!_  

A voice, screamed. 

Harry landed.

 Laying flat on his back, gasping, the egg held tightly on his lap, Harry stared at the stars circling over his head and wheezed for air. The wind had been knocked out of him, and his chest felt like someone had just beaten it down with a battering ram. Next to him, James lay very still, groaning quietly, crumpled onto his side on the edge of the train tracks. Mr. Pickle was barking next to him, and kept shoving their faces together and whining. He circled back and forth between the two men, reaching an ever-higher pitch of crying, while neither of them moved.

“Eggsy,” Harry said, quietly. “Good name for an egg.” James still wasn’t moving, and after another long moment, he sat up, grimacing as he clutched his chest. It was badly bruised, that was for sure, and felt like he might have broken a rib or two, at the very least. The pressure had abated slightly, but it still ached, and he shifted, setting the basket aside to press on James’ shoulder, roll him over. “James, come on, get up.” The younger man, when he rolled over, had a rather bad scrape on both his hands and what looked like a broken nose, but no sign of head trauma, and Harry shook him until he awoke, groggy, groaning.

“Hell,” was the first thing James said, coughing, a hand pressed to his chest. “Har, _Jesus_ , does the egg matter that much?”

“Of course it does,” Harry replied, matter-of-factly. “We’ve all come this far together, haven’t we? True companions are too good to lose.”

“Harry,” James looked up at him, still coughing, hair falling into his face, “It’s an egg.”

“But a very good egg, nevertheless.” Still wincing at the brilliant pain in his chest and coughing himself—that had to have been quite the fall, both earlier and now—Harry struggled to his feet, his muscles lethargic. At least the pain in his chest had made his head stop hurting. The train was long gone now, sped into the distance, so far along that he couldn’t even see the smoke despite how clear the night was. “Where are we, do you think?”

“I have no fucking clue,” James replied, still on the ground, although he had rolled over the rest of the way to his back. He was staring at the stars, hands folded gingerly on his stomach. “I don’t recognise the constellations. We’ll probably have to wait for the sun to come up before we start moving.” 

“Does it really matter which way we move, at this point?” Harry looked back down at James. “We’ve come all this way from that forest, and if anything, we seem to be getting further from Britain. Maybe we should work our way back.” James grimaced. 

“That’s a fucking long way to go, Harry.”

“We dug that grave, James. Now we’d better climb out of it.”

James stared at him, impassively, and then struggled up to his feet. They were both moving stiffly after the fall from the train, but they looked together back the way that they had come along the tracks. They stretched on as far as the eye could see, past and over the horizon, painted unearthly blue in the light of the full moon. 

James sighed. “Come on, chap,” he told Mr. Pickle.

They began to walk.


	5. the fields have turned brown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [the fields have turned brown](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mevmoxEsT1g)

On the third day that the sun rose as they walked along the endless train tracks, along the distant edge of the horizon, a house began to appear into view. From the distance, Harry thought that (like many of the other buildings and farms that they had passed, all of them turning from the late-summer drying green into the yellowed skeleton of early autumn) it was utterly abandoned, but as they got closer, he could see that the fields were still growing stunted crops, and vines, rust, and decay had not yet clawed apart the ploughs. The house itself, as they got closer, resolved into a great roaming plantation mansion, several emaciated horses grazing in front of it, its weather-beaten walls covered in sun-yellowed white paint, windows nailed shut. A dusty path ran up to its front door, and as they got closer, Harry could see how dried out it was. Like a husk, left to swelter in the high August sun until it was naught but leathered skin and yellowed bone, only inches from crumbling into fine dust.

On the fourth day, they reached the front path, and for a long time Harry and James stood there, Harry holding the egg and its basket under one arm, James with the exhausted Mr. Pickle scooped up against his shoulder.

“Think anyone lives here?” James asked, at last, scratching the splint he’d put on his broken nose as the sun inched ever-further across the horizon. “It doesn’t look nearly as decrepit as some of the other places we’ve passed.”

“Hard to tell,” Harry replied, fanning himself with the South Glade Mission Church pamphlet he had found in one of his coat pockets. “There is less ivy, certainly. It does seem like someone’s been by fairly recently.”

“There might be food in the pantry,” James said, and Harry started. He’d actually quite forgotten about eating and drinking—it seemed ages since he’d been thirsty. No doubt they would both come out of this a great deal thinner, that was for sure. “We could take a look?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to stop and take a rest indoors.” Harry sighed. The sun had been non-stop beating down on them during the day, and while at night it was at least blessedly dark, the heat never abated. Harry more than anything missed central air—words he thought he would never say in his life.

“My thoughts exactly.” James pushed open the gate at the front of the beaten dirt path, and it squeaked. “What do you think happened out here, that did all this?” Harry followed him closely, closing the gate once they were both through. “What killed all these people? What kind of war does this? Everyone we’ve met seemed so _resigned_ about it, but it seems the further we go the worse the disaster gets.”

“That’s bloody war for you,” Harry replied, scowling. His headache hadn’t abated once since they’d started travelling, and with the light it was always worse during the day. At least the bruising on his chest was better—even the cracked ribs weren’t bothering him as much. “It always leaves more people dead than good it makes.” James barked a laugh and glanced back at him, eyes dancing.

“And think, you’re the one of us who joined the military.”

“I joined to save lives. There’s a great deal of difference between being a surgeon and on the front lines.” Harry sniffed, but James was still smiling as they got to the front door and pushed it open. It creaked loudly in the silence, hinges squealing, and dust came down off of the frame, which Harry waited for before he followed James inside.

The shade of the roof was blessedly cool. The house smelled like unused must, dust hung on every surface, and the mansion had the same eerie, creaking quiet of all long-abandoned buildings—like a long-held breath, only now held so long it had decayed all the way into death. “Hello?” James called, more a formality than anything else, and the two of them stood very quiet, the only real noise their breathing and Mr. Pickle’s whistling breath next to James’ ear.

And then, with a great noise like a bellows filling after years-unused, a figure toppled through one of the downstairs doors. James yelped and jumped, and Harry, startled more by the younger man than by the figure, shouted “Jesus fuck!” and had his pistol half-pulled before Mr. Pickle could even start barking, already growling low in his throat.

They stood, utterly frozen, James’ free arm thrown out to protect Harry, Harry’s pistol in his hand with the safety off, as they both stared at the skeletal figure collapsed on the ground, utterly still. Even the wind, whistling through the nailed-shut shutters, quieted.

And then, almost impossibly, the figure took in a great, shaking breath. It was more like a death rattle, clattering bones and ancient, decayed lungs forcing in a single last try at life. The figure lifted its head, revealing the emaciated, skull-like visage of an old man, his skin liver-spotted paper, teeth yellowed behind drawn-back cracked lips, and his eyes so sunken that they seemed ready to shrivel up. His hair was stringy and mostly fallen out, and he stared at them fevered, hardly alive. He took another one of those great, awful, half-dead breaths, and shifted.

Simultaneously, both Harry and James backed up a step. James shifted closer, and Harry shifted his gun, ready to raise it. His hackles felt all on alert, like he was on the edge of a horrified, gut-dropping adrenaline rush. He could taste metal.

The figure sat up slightly and lifted one hand, the nails grown long and cracked, great grooves breaking them in half in some places. The skin on the hand had all drawn back and the bones stood out against the man’s thin skin. He was so emaciated that he hardly looked alive—instead, he looked like some monster out of a horror film, a corpse come to life. He took another rattling breath and crawled half a step closer, neither Kingsman agent moving until he opened his cracked-lipped mouth and whispered in a voice that had the same tone as nails on a chalkboard,

“Richie?”

“Oh please fucking shoot him,” James said, voice shaking, and Harry breathed in quick through his teeth, his entire body tight and tense with pent-up energy. He felt like he was about to vibrate out of his own skin in fright. “This has got to be a zombie. I can’t do this.” 

“You want to shoot him you fucking do it.” Neither of them did it. They just watched in silent horror, as the still-breathing skeleton crawled another half-step closer, and Harry now noticed that the man’s eyes were so clouded with cataracts that he couldn’t even tell where the iris began.

“Richie? Is that my Richie?”

Harry swallowed, audibly. James shuddered all over, and was still shaking like a leaf. Neither of them moved, just stood, dead-still, as the man inched forward again, rattling like a screen door in a windstorm, his ragged time-worn clothes literally peeling off his body as their aged material ripped apart on the floorboards.

“Richie, it’s me. You know me. It’s old Calvin. You left me here alone, and they’s all gone now, all the rest. I’m _so hungry_ , Richie. You’ve got some food for poor old Calvin, don’t you?” Mr. Pickle, still growling low in his throat, got across James and Harry’s thoughts concisely—he barked, quick, sharp, dangerous.

The living corpse froze.

“Oh, no,” he said, in his dusty, desert-cracked voice. “Oh no, my Richie? No.” He twisted his gnarled fingers, until James muffled a shout of surprise when they clutched, vicelike, dirty, decaying claws at the bottom of his trouser leg. “He couldn’t have gone to the dogs, no, no. He’s too good.” The corpse was _crying_ , ancient, leaking near-opaque tears at the edges of his eyes. They left tear tracks in the dirt and dust on his face, touching the ground and drying almost immediately in the interminable heat. “You can’t have done that to him, he ain’t bad, he’s a good boy, he is, he is.”

James, shaking slightly, jerked his foot back and out of the man’s hand. He seemed to have completely forgotten that they were even there, as now he was laying like a puppet with his strings cut, crying into the floor in great, gasping bursts.

“We should just put him out of his misery,” James said, disgust in his voice, and Harry made a noise of disapproval at him.

“Kingsman never condones the taking of an innocent life,” he replied, glaring at the younger man for a moment. “And you know it. Frankly, I’m more worried about whoever left him here to die, as they most certainly knew he couldn’t care for himself.” They were speaking not above a whisper, but it didn’t seem to matter, as the man had curled up into himself, crying helplessly. If he even knew they were still there, he didn’t care.

Slowly holstering his pistol, Harry set the egg and its basket down between his legs and crouched next to the man writhing on the ground. For a moment he just stared at him, at his translucent-straw hair ready to fall out, at his gnarled, breaking hands, before he cleared his throat. “Hello?” He asked, as quietly as he could. Consciously, he modulated his accent closer to the kind of tone that all the people they had met so far shared—a low, slow drawl, with loose consonants and vowels, and none of Harry’s practiced RP. “Sir? Are you all right?”

“Let me here to die!” The man shouted, voice cracking in his grief. “You took my Richie away, you did, you did! You already wanted poor old Candie dead, why’s it you care now?” Taken aback by the outburst from the seemingly-crumbling figure, Harry sat back on his heels and looked up at James. The younger man shrugged, wordless—he didn’t seem to have any idea of what to do either.

Sighing, Harry tried again. “No we...we found Richie.” It was, of course, a lie—he had no idea who such a person was, if indeed they even existed. However, it seemed essential given the present situation that they play into this man’s delusions, at least if they were to get to the bottom of this.

James, of course, no doubt would have preferred that they just move on. Harry Hart was a do-gooder, though, and he could not bear to leave a dying, starved man to whatever ignominious death was awaiting him when his body failed. At least, he could not let him die alone. 

“You found him?” The man asked, and it seemed like he was holding what little breath was left in his body in near-ecstasy. “Where is he, where’s my Richie?” 

“He’s—“ Harry froze, and then, “He’s just where you wanted him, sir.” Without knowing who either man was, he would have to play into the dying man’s last delusions.

“Oh,” whispered the corpse, sightless, clouded eyes wide and mouth pulled into a toothless smile. “Oh, of course. He’s gone upstairs, yes, to see my sister, she missed him _so_ , she misses him. We must go see them. The reunion, it’s here, it’s here my boy it’s here, my Richie came home and we aren’t alone any more, no, no we ain’t. We ain’t.” Twisting his emaciated body, the corpse struggled until he was leaning up slightly on his arms. His whole body shook with the effort, and as he crawled forward, sweat began to bead on his brow.

“Sir, do you want help,” Harry began, and the man shook his head rapidly, still staring up the stairs like they were pouring down heaven’s light on his face.

“No, no. Not from you...just from my Richie. I’m coming, Richie. You waited so patiently, you came back to me. I knew you would, I knew it...” Once again, distracted, he promptly forgot that Harry and James were there—still mumbling to himself, he began to crawl up the stairs, eyes fixed sightlessly ahead, and Harry hesitated for a moment before handing the egg and the basket to James.

“Are you going to follow him?” The younger man asked, staring with naked horror after the figure, and Harry nodded. 

“I’ll at least see that he has a bed to die in, rather than the floor.” Leaving the younger man with Mr. Pickle and the egg, Harry followed the aged, dying man slowly up the stairs as he crawled his way agonisingly upward. By the time they reached the top landing, sweat was streaming down his face and he groaned like a bellows every time he breathed, but he didn’t stop moving. His mouth was twisted into a rictus of effort and his sightless eyes bulged forward, like some great, horrific fish, and at long last he collapsed outside a door on the second floor, the dust and moth-eaten carpet crumbling on his skin where what remained of his aged clothes had decayed completely off.” 

“Richie,” he panted, voice not above a whisper. “Richie, my Richie, I’m here, I’m here for you.” He leaned forward, stretched out his skeletal hand, and pressed on the bottom corner of the door. 

It swung inward, and the stench hit Harry’s nose moments before the scream launching out of his lungs caught, bubbling, trapped in his throat and pressed like hot bile into his mouth.

“Fuck,” he said, quietly, through grit-teeth and pinched lips. The room was full of old bodies, rotten corpses that in the endless, vast heat of summer and years left unburied had practically mummified. Two corpses, this time truly so, were propped up in chairs, like they had starved to death there, unwilling (or unable) to get up. The last, her mouth forever locked in an open-lipped grimace, was sitting up in bed, somehow forever left perfectly upright. Her empty, hollow eyes stared at the wall. 

“Oh, lovely, my lovely girl, Richie’s here, he’s home, yes he is, it will all be good now, it will be.” The man kept crawling forward while Harry stood, frozen utterly still, in the doorway. He reached for the bottom of the bedspread and crawled up it, holding onto the cloth to keep himself upright. Like some monstrous snake, the man slithered up onto the bed and put his head practically in the corpse’s lap. “Oh, sister, he’s come at last, he has, he has, we ain’t alone no more, we ain’t—“

At the moment the man slid upward, thin arms shaking, to press his lips against the corpse’s rictus grin, Harry stumbled back out the door. 

He had seen a great many things in life. He had seen enough death for ten lives over. But that—that was too much, even for him. Panting, he came down the stairs, and James looked up at him from the front hall. For a moment, the younger man’s expression remained even, and then his eyes widened, his face paled. 

“Harry...?” He stood, slowly. “You look like you just saw a ghost—“

“We need to get the fuck out of here, right the fuck now,” Harry replied. “Not a moment longer.” James, shaken and taken aback, glanced up the stairs, and then, handing the egg back to Harry, went up in the direction Harry had just come from. For a moment it was silent as his footsteps receded, and after a pause he appeared himself, eyes shocked and wide in his pale, frightened face.

“What the fuck, yeah, okay, let’s get the hell out of here,” grabbing Mr. Pickle, the small dog snuffling at him, James practically barrelled out of the house without looking back, and moments later Harry followed him, shaking, out the door, holding onto the egg like it was his lifeline, the last real thing in this land that grew ever-more monstrous. 

“I’m done,” Harry said, after they had left far more quickly than they had come, now on the road once again. “I can’t handle this any more, James. I just can’t.” He looked up at the sun, blinding yellow, like a naked bulb, forever burning down on them. “It just goes on, and on. I just want to rest, I just want to go home.” He closed his eyes for a moment as they walked. “Everything here is just...”

“I know,” James replied, voice ragged. “I know.”

They walked on, in silence, unable to voice the thoughts like cigarette smoke that held in their throats, blackened their minds, and burned their lungs—walked on, into the burning sunlight and the drying, dying fields.


	6. will the circle be unbroken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [will the circle be unbroken](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4cWPKRhwIc)

At a certain point, Harry stopped keeping track of how many days it had been since the plantation house, and the dying man, and the room full of dead, beloved corpses. Time seemed both to pass and to never pass in the endless, cooked fields of ruined crops. They slept at night, bundled together at the side of the road, Mr. Pickle and the egg between them. In the day they walked, and walked, and walked. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been hungry, or thirsty.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen anything but fields of wheat, gone to rot, and the endless beat of the oppressive, ruinous sun.

However, one day, the weather at last started to change. From then on, the breezes cooled, and the sun began to set ever-earlier. And, at last, they came to a town—the first since the one with the church, with the train, with all the men who were supposed to be dead.

“Have we been here before?” James asked, as they climbed down a hill surrounded on all sides by recently-harvested corn, toward the town. “I feel like I’ve been here before.”

“Not here, not now.” Harry shook his head. “But it looks like...England.” As he took a deep breath of the crisp, early-fall air, he blinked. It _smelled_ like England, too. As they walked further into town, a few people poked their heads out the doors or windows of their cottages, but didn’t jeer or catcall, didn’t even offer hospitality. Just watched—more curious than hateful.

At last, James and Harry reached the centre of town, a great old cobblestoned court, grass and weeds growing up between the bricks, and found waiting for them a man, sitting on the edge of the fountain, and beside him, a beautiful centaurress who stool half again as tall as both Harry and James.

“Well, howdy,” said the man, tapping back the brim of his hat, staring at Harry in awe. “I never thought I’d see you here.” When he spoke, it felt like his eye was about to burst, and Harry pressed a hand against his face, grimacing in pain. The man smiled, and then laughed. “You got them too, huh? Too bad for you, they just aren’t going to go away.”

“Pardon?” Harry asked after a moment, when he could manage words around the pounding heat in his face.

“Your head, motherfucker.” The man laughed. “That just ain’t going to go away, not until you pick a side.”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” Harry replied at last, and the man shook his head.

“I didn’t expect you to. It’s all a bit more than you can take in right now, but you’ll get there, if you decide to stick around.” The man smiled and held out one dark hand—fingers not yet cracked or soiled from work, despite his age. “Around here, they call me Richie. This lovely lady is Gazelle.” Harry looked up at the centaurress, who snorted, and stamped one foot. “And you two are the lovely Galahad and Lancelot, in the flesh.” 

“How—“ James began, and Richie winked.

“Trade secrets, boys. You two came in at a good time—it’s been real quiet lately, a lot of folks have gone on into the great big beyond. A little bit of your brand of excitement would do us all wonders.” The man laughed, raucously, and Harry narrowed his eyes and held tightly onto his egg. There was something about this encounter that was leaving him more on-edge than it should: a cordite-edged burn of metal in the back of his mouth, the slick of blood on his teeth, the freight-train screaming of his left eye. There was no silence, no quiet.

Richie knew. His smile never wavered, and he met Harry’s eyes with an unblinking stare: as if he was daring Harry to wonder why.

“Stay a while,” Richie said at last, standing and clapping Gazelle on the side. “At least until the big derby; it’ll be a sight not to miss. We’re going to win, aren’t we, Gazzy?” She snorted, and walked off, Richie following her with a wave. Right before he left the fountain square he called back, “Check up at the old hospital! I think there’s someone there who is going to be real excited to see _you_!” With that final, parting shot he turned a corner after his horse, and left the two men standing in silence, James looking vaguely nonplussed and Harry with one hand clenched white-knuckled around the handle of the egg’s basked and the other balled up into a fist and pressed into the socket of his left eye, his breathing loud in his ear as he tried to find a silent place in the pounding, screaming noise in his head. 

“Come on,” James said, finally, and he carefully pulled Harry’s hand away from his eye, the older man making a wounded noise in the back of his throat as he did so. “Let’s go see who’s up at the old hospital.”

“I don’t like this,” Harry mumbled as James pulled him along, left eye clenched closed. “It sits badly with me. Something feels off.”

“Something’s felt off for a long time,” James replied, patient, and Harry couldn’t see him all that clearly, focusing his right eye on the ground as he moved sluggishly through the pain that was building in his skull, but he could feel James’ eyes, worried, on him. “But we’re still going anyway. Come on, Har.” With nothing to do but allow James to pull him onwards, Harry let his mindless feet move upwards, scuffing occasionally against the breaks in the cobblestone streets, the low rolling of a hill passing underneath him. The longer they walked, the further they got from Richie and Gazelle, the more the pain in his head fizzled down to just burning static pressed up and grating against the inside of his skull. When James stopped abruptly, Harry shook the last of the dust from his head and looked up to see where they were.

An old hospital building stood before them, the whitewashed walls dilapidated from years without new paint. The shutters were all open to let in the cool midafternoon air, and from somewhere within came the lilting chords of a well-tuned piano—a sound that stirred something deep within Harry, his chest tight. James looked at him closely, as if to reassure himself that Harry was, actually, going to be all right, and then pulled away to knock on the door with the old brass knocker: it was the same shield and logo that was on Harry’s old family home, the buff and blue. 

The dull thud of the knocker sounded into the hospital, and after a moment, the lilting piano went quiet. For a long moment, Harry and James stood side-by-side on the front doorstep, until the door swung inward to reveal a young woman just inside.

She had thick, curly hair tied back, with a square jaw, dimples and deep brown eyes. For a long moment, Harry stared at her, his thoughts blank.

“Harriet?” He whispered, his voice cracking, and her dark eyes snapped to him, long lashes going wide. “H—Harriet?”

“Harrison?” Her voice shook, and she slid one hand down the edge of the doorframe, hardly able to look away from him. “That can’t be—“

“Harriet!” Harry rushed to put down the basket, protecting his egg, and caught his sister as she launched into his arms with a bubbling, wild burst of laughter, her arms tight around his neck as she buried his face in his shoulder. He held her tight, pressed his face into her hair, and laughed, for a moment the pain in his head forgotten. “Harriet, oh, my darling, how are you here?”

“I was going to ask you that!” She laughed, her voice wet with tears, and for a long moment brother and sister, long-separated, simply breathed each other in, completely unwilling to let go. James stood to the side, taken-aback, until at last they let each other go, and Harriet took her brother’s face in her hands, her brow furrowed, her lips pursed. “Oh, Harry...look at you. You’re a right mess, you are. How old are you now? It’s hard to believe it’s been so long...”

“Fifty-four,” he replied, placing both his hands over hers. “Same as you. You don’t look like you’ve aged a day.” She smiled, sadly, back at him, and for a moment, he smelled charred timber and ashes.

“I haven’t.” Her voice was as old as the earth, and as sorrowed as a grieving soul. “Come inside, and bring your friend and your egg. I want to meet them both.”

 

 

Inside the hospital was dilapidated, but very clean. The old wooden floors creaked slightly as Harriet led them down a long, shotgun-house style hallway into the sitting room. It had their parents’ old grand piano in the corner and period couches everywhere, with a worn rug taking up the centre of the room. Harriet paused to gather up some books form off of one of the sofas and smoothed down the lace throw over the back, then gestured for them to take a seat.

“I’ll just be a moment,” she smiled, her eyes never leaving Harry, as she left the room to a vacuum of silence that lasted as long as it took for James to round on Harry.

“You never told me you had a sister?” He accused, more confused than anything. “A _twin_ sister?”

“That’s because she—“ the word caught in Harry’s throat, and it smelled like charred wood and low coals and damp embers, ash and dust and crying. “She. I thought she died.” She had died, he remembered it clearly. He remembered when they had brought her body out, and his mother had screamed and screamed and screamed. Harriet had died, Harriet was dead, but here she was. “I never thought it mattered.” His voice sounded small and mournful, even to himself, and he put his hand on the warm, smooth shell of his egg to steady himself. Before James could reply, Harriet came back in with a small tray of biscuits and a pot of tea and china cups, which she set down on the central table before she smiled at them both and took a dainty seat, spreading the length of her skirt around her legs.

She had always had the same knack Harry did for interrupting a moment before it could combust, only her soothing personality tended to smother the flames, and Harry’s own delivry tended to ignite them.

“Harrison,” Harriet prompted, “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” 

“Yes,” he managed, at last, still off-balance, still fighting the ache in his skull and the charred scent of flesh and bone, “Of course. Harriet, this is James Spencer. James, this is my twin sister, the lovely Lady Harriet Hart.” 

“It’s a pleasure,” James said, leaning forward to shake Harriet’s hand, and she smiled indulgently at him. “Harry never mentioned he had a twin sister.”

“Oh, that’s just what my brother’s like. Very secretive, he always has been.” Harry glowered at her, but it had been so long since he’d eaten that he had immediately taken a biscuit and all-but-shoved it in his mouth—upper-class manners saving him by the skin of his teeth. “And how did you two meet?” 

“We’ve been working colleagues for seventeen years,” James replied. “We met when I was just out of basic training.” 

“Oh!” She gasped. “You’re army?”

“Marines, actually. Same as Harry.” James looked over at him. “We met after we were both out of active service, though. Probably for the best, because this officer never would have found me.” He shrugged. “My family has good money, but no title. I had to start at the bottom of the heap, so to speak.” 

“Well, adversity is as sure a sign of success as anything else,” Harriet replied, and then looked at Harry. “You joined the Marines?”

“Staff surgeon,” Harry replied, awkwardly. “I was never in action.” At least, he was never in action while he was _in_ the Royal Marines. Since then, not so much. “James and I worked together at a different job.”

“Well, you’re being intentionally cagey, but I won’t push you.” Harriet sniffed and picked up her tea, manners impeccable as always. “Did you ever get married to that nice girl you met at university? What was her name—Nadia?”

“No, but James and I dated for about twelve years.”

“Harry!” James said, at precisely the same moment Harriet said, “Harrison!” They looked at each other for a moment, before both rounding on him.

“I mean, I can’t say I didn’t see it _coming,_ but Harrison, Father must have simply combusted!”

“He passed away,” Harry said, as gently as he could, without adding _a few years after you did_ because Harriet wasn’t dead, had never been dead. He added, instead, “About thirty years ago.” Harriet’s eyes went very soft, then, and she lowered her teacup.

“Oh...was it easy?”

“In his sleep. He had a stroke.” She nodded, slowly, and closed her eyes.

“Mother?”

“Car accident,” Harry lied, the same way he had been lying about it for twenty years, because he wasn’t going to tell Harriet what really happened—about their mother, slowly wasting away, until her doctors realised (too late, too late) that the quinine she’d been given for her arthritis was what she was killing herself with, overdose by overdose, until she’d faded between one day and the next and Harry had come to check on her the following morning and found her collapsed in the solar, smiling beatifically. After a moment, he shifted to lean forward and put his hand atop his sister’s. “I’m so sorry, Harriet.”

“I only wish I had been there,” she murmured, her brown eyes large and wet with tears. “You must have been so lonely.”

“It’s all right,” he replied, smiling. “I had John; he always stuck around.” Harriet laughed, and wiped her eyes.

“I suppose I couldn’t have expected him not to. All those years?”

“My oldest friend, now. He lost all his hair; you’d think it atrocious.”

“Oh, goodness, I could never have married him like that.” She took a few deep breaths, and Harry sat back down. “What’s he doing now?”

“He works at the same place James and I do, in technology. He’s gained a bit of an obsession with the modern computer.” Harriet nodded, slowly, and took a few deep breaths.

“So you’re—alone, now, then?” 

Harry glanced at James, who was watching him with an expression midway between hurt and exhaustion, resigned to his fate. 

“Yes,” Harry said, at last. This had dredged up enough bad memories of the way they had stopped being Harry-and-James and gone back to just being Harry and James. “But I have James and John, that’s not so lonely.”

“So who is the title passing to, then?” Harry glanced over and saw that his sister was watching him with a square jaw and flinty eyes. “You can’t tell me that you didn’t think of that, especially when you’re _here_ , of all places. You’ve passed it on to Cousin Charles and his children, certainly?”

“I’ve willed it to the crown,” Harry replied, and Harriet went ashen, and then very rapidly, flushed.

“Harrison!” She stood to her full six feet of height, her cheeks rosy with anger. “You did _what?_ ”

“I willed it to the crown!” He replied again, agitated. “You can’t possibly think that at _this_ point in my life I wouldn’t have considered Charles? I don’t want to keep the title in a family so obsessed with our faux-royal heritage that you can practically smell it from London? No, I willed it to the crown!”

“I am absolutely—“ Harriet began, and then took a few deep breaths. “I don’t even know what to _say_ to you.” Her hands, clenched in fists at her sides, were shaking. “I can’t believe—“ 

“I don’t know what you _expected_ —“

“A little bit of self-possession for your lord and peerage, not only are you buggering about but you’re also—“

“I’m sorry,” James interrupted, abruptly, just as Harry realised he was standing and shouting just as loudly as his sister was, and both of them paused, glaring at him. “This is eerie, frankly, with both of you looking at me like you’re ready to kill me, but please.” He grabbed Harry’s hand and practically jerked him back onto the couch, and after a moment, Harriet resumed her seat as well, but her lips were a fine, pursed line, and her eyes blazed with anger. “Lady Harriet, you have my deepest apologies for interrupting and imposing on you as we did. However, I’m as...flabbergasted,” he looked at Harry then, “About Harry as you are. I think maybe it would be best if we let you be? After all these years, the last thing that you two need to do is have a fight.” Harriet didn’t say anything for a long moment, but then she stood up, dusted herself off, and nodded. 

“Of course. You’re right; no reunion should be married by ill behaviour.” She took a few deep breaths. “There’s an open house down in the village you two could stay in for until you’re rested. It might need a bit of work, but the roof won’t cave in on you, and it’s better than sleeping outdoors, especially with the fall rolling in.” She looked away from them, and Harry could feel her the judgment in that stare. “I’ll go get the key.” 

Just like before, it was silent after she left the room, only this time it was charged with disappointment and anger. After a long moment, James said, 

“Didn’t your mother kill herself?”

Harry stared at his hands, and finally said, “Yes. Please don’t tell Harriet.”

“Harrison and Harriet?”

“My parents weren’t imaginative.”

“John?”

“Merlin.”

The silence stretched on between them, and after a long moment, Harriet’s distant footsteps carrying to them through the old hospital hallways, James wrapped an arm around Harry’s shoulder and pulled him over until Harry could bury his face in the younger man’s side. “It’s fine,” he said, at last. “I get it.”

“Thank you,” Harry managed, reaching out to sink his fingers into Mr. Pickle’s thick fur where the dog sat on James’ lap, and for the first time in a very long time he found himself wordlessly glad for another person’s presence at his side, holding him up. 

Had James not been there, had he been lost on his own in this long, endless land with naught but his dog and his egg for company, he didn’t know if he would have made it.


	7. black is the colour of my true love's hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [black is the colour of my true love's hair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWmCbEbMmeU)

The house was lovely. It was brick, with its wood trim painted russet, and its old roof (with a few leaks) had just needed patches. The heavy wooden door was carved with a pattern of leaves, and the furniture, if dusty and full of mothballs, was well-built. It smelled the same way the rest of the town did—like England, home and rustic. The heavy blankets all about had been crocheted by whoever had lived there before Harry and James had moved in, and the pantry was a perfect place for Harry to put the egg, its basket and the warmth of the enclosed room protecting it.

As the fall leaves browned, and the crisp wind down from the hospital began to smell of woodfire and mulch, Harry found himself...tired. Tiring.

“Two weeks to the derby!” Richie yelled, as he walked past their house, one morning. “Are ya’ll gonna be there?”

“We’ll see,” Harry called back. At first, he had thought they would have moved on—after all, they had to get home, and sooner rather than later—but here, in the crisp air, the pain in his head wasn’t so bad. Oh, it spiked, certainly, especially when Richie and his dark eyes and enigmatic smile looked at him, and when Harriet smiled at him with her sad knowing eyes, but it had been _quiet_ , and he appreciated it.

Everything seemed quieter here. Even his heartbeat and breathing—it was a prefect idyll, some long-lost town that modern England had swallowed up, but had been spat out whole here.

“You think we’ll still be here?” James asked, at last, and Harry looked up to see the younger man peering down from off the roof. “It’s still a few weeks away.” 

“I don’t know,” Harry replied. “We have to wait until Harriet finds that map, at least.” His sister had a map of the area of the Unknown laying around, and she thought it might help them get home—but she had to find it first. “And the air is helping my head.” James was quiet.

“You were in such a hurry to get back to England. What changed?” Harry thought of the egg, nestled warm in its pantry nest, and shrugged.

“I realised we might never get home. We’ve been looking for months, and it seems this is the closest we might ever get.” Harry paused. “It might be easiest to just find somewhere we can stay, until the spring. I don’t want to still be lost in the winter.” 

“All right,” James said, hesitantly, and left Harry below, throwing a sack of rice for Mr. Pickle, who ran repeatedly to get it, his stubby little tail wagging, his barks full of joy. 

This wasn’t so bad. James seemed happy, caring for the house, and it had been so _long_ since he’d seen Harriet—Harry could hardly remember the look of her charred body and the sound of his mother’s screams now, and the constant pressure in his skull was almost gone, like it had gone to sleep. He had been so tired, lately, and maybe that was part of it; perhaps he’d just needed to sleep it off.

Harry had forgotten how nice it could be to just relax, and rest. He’d needed it, after travelling for what felt like months, and before that—something before that. He didn’t really remember what, though. He just remembered that James went off somewhere, and he was left alone, struggling without him until they had been reunited.

The days passed like that, and each day that passed by, the air growing crisper and the leaves turning, as the autumn turned onward. The days got shorter, and Harry began to wonder if their suits would be enough for as the season turned on toward winter.

At last, the derby came.

  

 

The day dawned with a red sunrise bleeding up over the horizon, like an open bullet wound, sluggish and already slowing. It smelled like fall, but Harry couldn’t shake the scent of hospital sterility and cordite from the back of his throat. When he woke, James was already out, and he crawled blearily out of bed, cleaned up in the loo, and emerged just as all the people of the town were headed in toward the racetrack in long streams of humanity. 

“Good morning,” said a voice, and Harry looked over to see Harriet coming closer, dressed up in a long skirt for a day at the races. “I thought I might have to get you up.”

“I don’t sleep that late.” Harry replied, and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. “Good morning, Harriet. Have you seen James?”

“Not this morning. He’s probably already down at the racetrack?” As she looped her arm around his, Harry clucked to Mr. Pickle, who came racing out of the house with a few happy barks of greeting for Harriet, and Harry shut the door behind him. He didn’t bother to lock it—what would they steal, why would they bother?

“Most likely.” They walked together arm in arm around the edge of the hamlet toward the large makeshift amphitheatre seats that had been erected by the townsfolk donating their chairs for the week that stood on the edge of the racetrack. Down below in their lanes the runners were lining up, and as Harry looked around, he realised for the first time just how many people were in attendance. There were the townsfolk, yes, but here and there he could see men in blue and grey, and a few folks in the rustic, worn corduroys of the church, the tired old men that were waiting for the train. 

“Is it this popular every year?” Harry asked, as he and Harriet found seats, a third one saved next to him for James—of whom there was still no sign. “I thought it was just a local thing.” 

“Oh, no. People come from all over; many of them wait all year just for this. It’s a good send-off.” Harry nodded. “Personally, some years I think that I’m going to leave town before it comes, but somehow, I always end up staying...maybe I was just waiting for you this year.” She smiled at him. “Who knows. I’m glad you decided to stay until now, though. It’s a sight that can’t be missed.” 

“Speaking of,” Harry looked around, “Where _is_ James?” 

“I’m sure he’ll be here in time, Harry. Stop worrying, enjoy the race!” Her cheeks were alight with happiness about the forthcoming event, and Harry settled back, following her lead. Below, his eyes caught on Richie and Gazelle, and the man waved up at them before he led the centauress, tossing her long black hair in the fall wind, to her stall. The bustle and hubbub were bubbling in the air, and soon enough as they prepared the jockeys came out to mount their horses.

Gazelle, staring straight ahead, rode by herself, Richie on the sidelines calling to her. The riders lined up, pressed chest-first against their gates, as the starter took to his line. He took a megaphone from someone who passed it to him—an old-fashioned one, just to cup his voice—and he held it to his mouth.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!” In the crisp fall air, his heavily accented voice carried, loud and clear. “Today we’re here for the Derby,” there was a word before _Derby_ , but when Harry heard it, it sounded like static and the deafening pop of gunfire, and the blossom of scatter-burst pain behind his eye, but it was gone as fast as it had come—a brief flare of flame, superheated by too much oxygen, combusted as suddenly as it had come. He hadn’t even had time to press his hand over his left eye. “And as you can see, we have these fine, _fine_ racers lined up to do their best f’you. Let’s hear the names and colours, shall we?” He went down the line, stopping by each stall to call out the name of the jockey and the horse, denoting their colours. At the very end, he stopped in front of Gazelle, and after a moment of fluster, called, “Gazelle, riding for herself, marked by the black pennant!”

After he had finished calling all the names, he gestured to the base of the stands. “Last minute bets, folks! If you want in, now is the chance to make it rich! Take what you can with you, they say!” Throughout the crowd, a few people stood here and there, and a clamour went up at the betting station as the folks from the crowd went down. A man standing to the side flipped through the signs, and Harry craned his head, squinting slightly to see what the highest bet was. 

“If you bet on Gazelle, you would make a fortune,” Richie said, sliding into a seat next to him—making Harry’s head throb.

“I’m afraid I haven’t got any money.” Harry smiled at him. “I’m sure you’re betting on her?” Richie grinned, his white teeth reminding Harry for a nauseous split-second of old, bleached bone.

“Oh, we have a lot riding on this one. Don’t you worry.” As always, he made Harry feel nonplussed—there was something about the man that set him on the wrong foot. He didn’t seem to want to jibe Harry any more, though, and settled in with his hands folded behind his head as the starter lined up, holding the chequered flag in one hand and the starter pistol in the other.

Moments later, the pistol fired, the flag lifted, the gates flung open, and the jockeys and their horses raced forward. The dust cloud was massive, and Harry shaded his eyes, squinting at the crowd. “Go, Gazzy, you got this!” Richie shouted it through his cupped hands to carry his voice, and once the dust of the opening had quieted, indeed, Gazelle was firmly in the lead. The other eight racers were tight on her heels, though, and Harry found himself leaning forward in his seat without meaning to. 

“Oh, oh goodness,” Harriet was whispering next to him, her hands clasped around his arm. Mr. Pickle, crouched between his knees, was fascinated by the human behaviour, his paws up on the empty seat below Harry. “Do you think she’ll win?” 

“She’s gonna.” Richie’s voice was completely self-assured—when Harry shot a glance at the other man, it was clear that he wasn’t even agitated, still relaxed. “She always does.” As the race kept going, the horses racing at the end of the first lap, Gazelle had pulled out a full length and a half behind the next horse in line, and her long black hair was as telling as her flag as she kept pulling forward. 

The race was almost over: she was two lengths in front of the next horse, there was a quarter mile left to go. Two and a half lengths, less than a quarter. Three lengths, less than a length from the finish. 

Gazelle careened over the finish line almost three and a half lengths ahead of the next horse, and as the starter called the time and the win, the horses thundered after her and— 

“Gazelle!” Richie’s voice cracked and he surged out of his seat as the centaurress suddenly tripped, her legs going out from under her and her head and shoulders vanishing down into the oncoming screaming tide of horses racing back to the finish. Below on the track, suddenly everything had become shouts, dust, and chaos, and Richie was out of his seat and racing down.

“You’ll get hurt—!” Harry shouted, and jerked out of Harriet’s hand. 

“Harrison!” She screamed, as he stumbled down the steps after the other man, Mr. Pickle barking wildly. “Harrison, don’t go!” He was already halfway down the stand steps after Richie, and he could hear her clattering after him, Mr. Pickle’s claw-clicks following. Richie was trying desperately to jump onto the track, but the men running the betting booth had stopped him from jumping the railing as the horses and jockeys scattered apart like displaced water, fanning out around the track to reveal— 

Gazelle.

“Oh, my god,” Harriet whispered, “I can’t look, that’s—“

Harry found himself pushing his sister behind him, his mouth a tight line of a grimace, while to his left Richie shook and then suddenly doubled over and vomited at the sight before them. Collapsed in the dust was Gazelle: her legs all broken, her chest badly dented and cut by horse hooves. Her torso was bent at an impossible angle, and her dark hair lay splayed out on the dirt, next to her dropped black flag.

Both of them were matted with churned dirt and blood.

The sun above them was beating down over-bright in the clear sky onto the track, and Harry pushed Harriet back further. “Don’t look,” he told her, not turning around.

“Harrison, you can’t mean to—“

“ _Don’t_ look, Harriet.” She quieted, her hand clenched on his arm, but he could hear her horrified breathing. “Stay here,” he told Richie, who was crying hoarsely against the railing, sliding down into a crouch and moaning Gazelle’s name over and over again.

“Harry,” Harriet murmured, and he turned to look back at her. “You’re a doctor, not a vet. You can’t do anything for her—if she’s alive, there’s naught to be done anyway.” He found his grimace creasing the edges of his eyes, and he shook his head, said nothing. After a moment, he took off his jacket and handed it to his sister, who took it carefully. Left in his shirt and his shoulder holster, Harry pulled his remaining pistol and rolled up his sleeves.

“Excuse me,” he said, to the betting brokers, and pushed past them to hop over the railing. The jockeys and their horses were already clearing the track, and as the bright autumn sun and cool breeze ruffled his hair, Harry walked through the wrecked dirt, his shoes sinking down into the mixed loam. Behind him, he could hear Richie’s helpless screaming sobs, and before him, he could hear Gazelle’s pained, desperate breathing. As he got closer, she twisted her head to look at him—one side of her skull was half-crushed in, and her mouth was bleeding.

How she was even still alive, he wasn’t sure.

One of her hands twitched, and he stopped just at the edge of the blood stained dirt that surrounded her fallen body. She wheezed, quietly, one dark eye watching him with nothing but scorn.

Harry wordlessly took the safety off his pistol, lifted it up, and emptied the remaining clip into her skull, his shoulder jerking with the force of the recoil, his jaw so tight he could hear his teeth grinding. The shots were louder than thunderclaps in the clear air, echoing around the racetrack, and when silence fell again, Mr. Pickle began howling, long and hoarse. 

Richie’s helpless wailing joined him, leaving the atmosphere deadened, desperate. 

Harry put his pistol away, trudged off the track, and wordlessly took his coat back from Harriet. They left, silently, holding hands tightly as they hadn’t since they were children.


	8. swing low, sweet chariot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [swing low sweet chariot](https://youtu.be/GUvBGZnL9rE)

When they got back to the grave-quiet hospital, Harry took off his coat and stood silently in the front hall while Harriet went around and shut all the shutters, the wood slamming closed until they were plunged into the dim, monumental quietude of a house too large for the people inside it that was waiting for a pin to drop; for a row, for a death.

When Harriet hadn’t come back to the front hall, Harry quietly walked into the sitting room and found her leaning against the closed shutters, her hands splayed out on the slatted wood. She didn’t turn around when she heard his footsteps, and Mr. Pickle, dogging Harry’s heels, ran over to her, snuffling quietly.

“Why?” She asked, finally, her voice cracking. “Why did you do it?” 

“Excuse me?” Harry asked, bemused—her question had come seemingly out of nowhere, and after a long moment of silence, Harriet turned around to look at him, leaning back against the shutters, like she was making herself as small as possible.

It smelled like damp ash.

“Why did you shoot her?” Harriet’s voice cracked on the last word. “She was going to die anyway; why did you do that?”

“Because it was better than leaving her there to suffer—should I have let her struggle with her whole body broken near in half? You know it was the right thing to do.”

“It wasn’t your decision to make, Harry!” Her voice cracked on his name. “You hardly knew them, why did you just go do it like that?” 

For a moment, he struggled. He did know them, he had known that was right—his gut told him to shoot Gazelle, and he had. “James would have done the same,” he settled for at last, and it sounded like the excuse it was.

“James isn’t here!” Her shout rang out around the empty house just as the gunshot had around the racetrack, and Harry grimaced as if slapped. “He left you, Harry! He’s gone!”

“He’s been gone _one day_ he hasn’t left!” His hands were shaking, and he didn’t know when that had started. “James has always been there, he’s always been by my side! _You’re_ the one that left, Harriet—vanished out of my life! You don’t know what’s happened in thirty years!”

“The brother I knew thirty years ago would never have killed a woman in cold blood, that much I know.” Harriet’s voice was shaking, and she stared at Harry with haunted eyes. “You’ve changed so much. I feel like I hardly know you.” She was crying, her cheeks bright with tears, and she watched him like he was half a monster himself.

He was.

He always had been. 

“And you haven’t changed at all.” Harry felt very quiet, now. Subdued. “I’m sorry, Harriet. Someone had to do it. Would you have rather she faded away out there while we all watched? It was best to put her out of her misery.”

“No,” his sister said at last, her voice thick with emotion. “No. It was just so _awful_ , Harrison. How can you do that, without caring? Doesn’t it hurt?” She looked away from him, her lips a pursed tight line. “The guilt would eat me up inside.”

“It used to.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Not any more.” he said, at last, and then after a moment, he stepped forward and carefully wrapped his arms around his sister, who folded up and put her face into his shoulder and cried, hard. “Harriet, I’m so sorry you had to see that. It would have been better if you hadn’t.”

“What did you do with your life?” She asked, voice muffled by his shoulder. “You’re a doctor. You’re supposed to heal people, Harry.” Her fingers clenched in the cloth of his shirt, nails digging into his skin. “Not kill them. What went so wrong that you’re like this? You’re a good person,” Her voice broke, and she sobbed. “Where did you go so wrong?”

“You died.” It was a fact, and it hung heavy and pregnant in the air between them, like a noose around his neck, like the cement tied to her feet. One way or another, they were always fated to drown—to go down together.

“I know.” Harriet’s thick voice when she confirmed it made him close his eyes, and Harry doubled over her, held her very tightly, her shirt bunching under his fingers, her back warm under his hands, like if he let her go, she’d vanish out of his grasp like smoke. He had always known, of course—he had always known she was dead, that he could not bring her back and find her again. He’d known from the moment he’d seen her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know. I thought if you didn’t...”

“I always did.” She didn’t let go of him, and their earlier argument was forgotten, left them in silence with only one another, the spectre of waiting death hanging heavy over them.

The noose tightened around his neck. She stepped off the dock.

“What will you do now?” Harriet asked it after they had both been silent for a long time, when neither of them could pretend any longer that there wasn’t a noose around Harry’s neck. “Are you going to stay?”

“No, Harriet.” Harry held her tighter, because if he let go, he would be alone, again. Forever. He wouldn’t get her back twice. “I can’t. I have to go back, you know that. It’s not my time yet.” He paused, and added, “It’s your fault for going so far ahead of me.” She laughed at his words, tearfully, the sound muffled and wet against his shirt, and punched him gently in the arm.

“That’s mean, Harry. But, I know. I suppose it was wishful thinking that you would stay. There’s so much waiting for you out there.” Harriet pulled back, finally, and her makeup was running, her brown eyes large and overbright with tears. “I don’t measure up.” She pushed Harry’s hair back from his face, her thumbs shaking against his cheekbones. “I waited for you for so long. I don’t know if I can any more.” 

“You don’t have to.” It ached, in his chest. “Oh, Harriet, you never had to wait in the first place. I’ll find you again.” Harry’s voice cracked, and he was crying, now, crying harder than he could remember doing so in a very long time. He swallowed past the lump in his throat, closed his eyes, and pressed their foreheads together, his hands shaking on her shoulders. She held to him very tight, the two of them lost in the feel of each other for what would likely be the last time. “I always do.” Each word shook, and Harriet laughed, but it shook as well, and they said goodbye like that, without words, knowing that when they let go it was over—they would part—for the last time. 

“I love you,” Harriet told him, their cheeks pressed together, her small hands tight on his back. “I love you, more than anything, my big stupid brother. Please be safe out there. When you come back, be peaceful. Take care of yourself.” 

“Always,” Harry promised, into her thick curls.

At last they parted. There were no goodbyes, just thick silence and loneliness. When Harry left the hospital, jacket hung over his arm, Mr. Pickle at his heels, Harriet stood and watched until he retrieved his egg from its forgotten place in the pantry of his house, and then he walked on, out of town, over the hill, and into the heavy oncoming dark.

And then there was silence.


	9. the hangman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [the hangman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48bX-hBjVn4)

Harry walked, Mr. Pickle at his heels and the egg in his hand, until it grew dark.

As he walked, the lights of the town receded behind him, and the great, endless depths of the forest came up before him. Waiting. Watching. With each step, the old path around him grew quieter—the bustle of human life moved away behind Harry, left with the quiet village, now so coated in the scent of death, in favour of the eerie silence of an abandoned farmstead, left long unfilled by humanity. Like there was something out there, waiting for you to walk into the side of the road, and then vanish into the darkness, another victim of the darker parts of the world, where more than just humanity dwelled. 

The trees closed in, the beaten path vanished out from under his feet, Mr. Pickle walked close, and Harry continued forward. 

He didn’t look back, to where his sister waited cold and alone, or to the sides, where the forest waited hungry and wanting. He looked forward, eyes focused deeper into the forest. 

The forest swallowed him up, and he walked on into it, alone and unafraid. 

And in the darkness, the Beast waited.

Hungry.

 

 

“Hello, James.” Harry had come to a halt in front of a large tree, twisted and gnarled with age and anguish. The knots were melting faces, old eyes crying oil for want of release. James was sitting crouched on the roots, smoking a cigarette, staring off into the darkness of the forest, his shoulders hunched. “I thought you might be waiting for me.” After a long moment, James looked up at him, his eyes sunken and his cheeks hollowed. They stared at each other in silence, until Harry held out a hand for the younger man to take. 

“You would still bring me along?” James asked, his voice hoarse and worn, staring at the proffered hand. “After all this? How do you know I don’t want you to stay too?” He laughed, bitter and sharp, more at himself than at Harry.

“We came into this together,” Harry replied, gentle. “So we may as well go back out of it together. I don’t intend to leave you here alone without a fight.”

“Where you want to go, I can’t follow.”

“I know. Come along until the end anyway.” Harry paused, and then added, “I was never any good to you alive last time—if I’m to die, I want to do it by your side this time.” James hesitated a moment longer, then put out his cigarette on the sole of one of his shoes, stood up, and took Harry’s hand tightly in his. The two men looked at each other for a long time, before James quietly said,

“For what it’s worth, Harry, I’m sorry.”

“I never doubted it.” James laughed again, pained, at Harry’s truthful forgiveness, and together, the two of them, holding hands tightly, continued into the ever-encroaching darkness, the egg in Harry’s free hand, Mr. Pickle dogging their heels, facing what was going to come together for the last time.

Behind them, the forest closed up, swallowed them in, and left naught behind but decay.

 

 

“Hello, Harry.” The Beast said.

The darkness ahead of them in the depths of the forest blinked, and two great, glowing eyes looked back out at them. At the shadows feet the Woodsman was crouched, desperately protecting his lamp, hunched over it like an infant. The eyes in the darkness shifted and tilted, its horns of night poking up almost into the canopy above, its trailing shadows twisting into the earth at its feet. 

“Here I had begun to think you might never come, and you would stay. _That_ would have been no fun.”

“My apologies for taking so long.” Harry bent over and gently set down the egg between his feet, and although he could feel James tugging on his hand, did not let go. “We may as well stop playing with each other and get to the point.” The Beast laughed, a deep, grating sound that sounded like the way hot oil would have felt pouring down your throat, the suffocating choke of the noose. “What’s the deal you want to make?”

“Oh, it’s very simple.” The Beast spread his hands, shadows shifting to make room for the dense darkness of his figure, the cowering Woodsman ducking. James finally pulled his hand away from Harry’s and stepped to the side, his head hung, hands clenched at his sides. “Stay, and be with James, your sister, and your dog, and take the Woodcutter’s lamp, or go, and leave them all alone for the rest of forever, just like you have everyone else. Fail them again, just like you always do. I appeal to your sense of _duty_ ,” the Beast paused, and then added, “To your _guilt_. That egg will never hatch, Harry. Just let it go. Stay here, where you’ll never be alone again. Let the egg die.”

Harry looked over at James, who would still not look at him, and back at the Beast. Then, he looked down at the Woodsman, who curled tighter around his lamp.

“You can’t have it,” the older man whispered, jealousy and anger in his eyes. Harry shook his head, and waved a hand. 

“You keep it, then. I don’t want it. What’s the point—staying here forever, bound and beholden to that lamp? The moment that you gave in to thinking it would save you, you were lost.” Harry snorted at the Beast, stared its great, glowing eyes, thick with anger, down. “You’re still alone, and I hardly think the Beast is any great company.”

“Harry—“ he looked over, and James was standing there, watching him, face dark and shadowed. “You’re really going to leave?” His voice shook, and then hardened, his expression shifting—tightening. The resigned man from before was gone. “Are you going to abandon me, again? What are you going to do out there, grow old and decay? Die, alone? Expect me to _wait_ for you?” 

“I’m not alone, and I never bloody have been.” Harry clenched his fist, heard Mr. Pickle growling by his side. “James, if I stay, what will we do? Wander, until we cease to exist? Tell stories of what we used to have? Leave behind what we have waiting for us? I won’t follow you out of some misplaced sense of duty, James!”

“So you’ll leave me alone to die, then!” James took another step back, closer to the Beast, to his darkness, away from Harry. “Go back without me, since I can’t leave! Go on, abandon me! For yourself, always for yourself!” James’ voice cracked. “You’re always the same, you self-centred, callous, son of a—“

“You’re not James!” Harry shouted, and he felt like his head was clear, for the first time in forever—the dust had left, the pulsing behind his eye was gone. “You’re not James, and you _never will be_! The James I knew understood that people don’t always have to be together to be happy!” James shrank, as if struck, and Harry turned an accusatory finger on the Woodsman. “And you! What do you think you are, hiding from your guilt? Every soul you feed into that lantern isn’t saving you!” He looked up at the Beast, who now loomed taller than the trees, outline shaking and vibrating, growing with every bit of anger that fed into him, his appetite never slaked. “You’re just feeding _him_!” The ground began to rumble, the Beast’s great eyes widening, his mouth opening. Squaring his jaw, Harry took a deep breath, and said, “All he’s ever been is a great shadow!” 

Harry ran forward, swung his leg back, and even as the Woodsman shrieked and tried to grab it, James shouted his name, and the Beast roared like the earth was wont to come apart, Harry aimed a kick and his foot connected with the side of the lantern with a crunch.

The lantern went sailing through the air, flame guttering, and stuck the ground with a shatter, glass tinkling, wood snapping, and the flame—

Went out. 

The Beast screamed. 

Everything went silent. Harry stood, shaking, panting for breath, his hair matting to his temples with sweat. Somewhere, in the utter darkness, he heard the Woodcutter moan, alone. The Beast was gone, a silent vacuum in his place, the darkness utter and absolute in the wake of his passing.

Harry turned around at last, to face James. He stood silently, watching Harry with sunken, haunted eyes. A line ran down the centre of his forehead, and blood dripped along it. “You were never going to stay,” he said, at last.

“No.”

[ Illustration done by the amazing [Linda](http://waltermittie.tumblr.com/)! ]

James stared at him, and finally stepped to the side. Behind him was the egg, still in its basket, sitting in the one patch of light in the clearing. Mr. Pickle skulked after the younger man, watched Harry with the great, understanding sadness that all pets knew.

“Go,” James told him, crying silently, and Harry walked forward—and, for a moment, hesitated.

How simple it would be to stay. How easy. To take James’ hand, to walk back to the village, to have Harriet, and James, and Mr. Pickle, and peace. 

How unremarkable.

Harry picked up the basket, and walked alone on into the dark, the chill of the forest sloughing off of him inch by inch, the Woodsman’s cries going silent, James’ eyes on his back finally fading, Mr. Pickle’s pained whines petering off. He walked until the darkness wasn’t darkness any more, but deep water, and then onward, into the unknown.

 

  

And, on the other side, Harry Hart awoke.


	10. i'm going home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [i'm going home](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWQDl6cyj2Y)

It was very quiet. It smelled of sterility and the even-paced beeping of a heart monitor filled the room. On the wall, a day calendar hung, the date November first. Outside the room, Harry could hear footsteps, and the bustle of life. Distantly, he heard someone shouting. He lay in a bed, face turned to the left, and he stared into the room for a long time, thinking. 

Into his long time of lonely silence, there came footsteps and a door opening, and Harry shifted one eye to look at who was there. It was a nurse, her hair done up in a bun, and she went over to IV tower next to his bed, and started shifting through them, before she turned to the foot of his bed and picked up the clipboard there, pulling a pen out of her bun to check something off.

She glanced up at him, before she left, and her eyes met his.

She froze, her pen hovering half an inch above the paper, her mouth partway open.

“Mr. Hart?” She managed at last, her voice shaking. “Can you understand what I’m saying?”

Harry jerked, and then, nodded.

She set down the clipboard. “Oh,” the nurse said, her hands trembling. “My goodness. I’ll be. I’ll be right back.” She turned and left the room at a speed walk, and after the door closed, Harry shut his eyes.

For the first time in a very long time, he slept.

 

 

“Will,” Harry said, his voice hoarse and cracking on the word, when they took the tube out of his throat and Merlin leaned over his bed, brown eyes tired behind his glasses. 

“What?” The other man replied, eyebrows tugged together. “Are you sure he’s got as much function as you said?” He called to the nurse. “He just called me Will.” 

“Well, sir, seeing as I don’t know your real name—“ Harry cracked his lips to speak again, and Merlin waved her silent, leaning closer to hear Harry speak. 

“ _My_ will,” he clarified, and Merlin raised his eyebrows.

“What, right now—“

“Yes,” Harry managed, and then closed his eyes, sagging with the effort of speaking as much as he had. Merlin shifted away, the man’s presence leaving the side of his bed, and Harry fell into a half-nap, dozing while he waited for Merlin’s footsteps to return. When he did, Harry opened his eyes and struggled to lift his hand, waited for the man to put a pen into his fingers.

“This is stupid,” Merlin said. “You can’t even hold the pen.” Instead of expending more energy in biting back at the other man, he waited until Merlin placed the paper of his will against the bed, atop his clipboard. Harry gestured one finger to have Merlin turn a page, and with a sigh he did so, until Harry tapped the right one with his pen.

He reached out and, hand trembling, carefully scratched out where in his will it said that the title of Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne would revert to the crown upon his death, and wrote in shaky, slanting simple letters, instead—

 _To Charles Hart_.

“Oh,” said Merlin, as Harry let the pen slip from his fingers, smiling slightly as he fell asleep again, exhaustion dogging his bones. He could see Harriet smiling behind his eyelids—if nothing else, he could do that much for her.

 

 

“You’ll have to be gentle with him, lad,” said Merlin’s voice, outside the door. Harry lay on his hospital bed, good eye looking at the door, twitching his fingers to force them into moving, to make his body start working again. “He’s still not very well.”

“I know that,” Eggsy said, his voice more muffled than Merlin’s. “I think I can handle this, Merlin. Trust me, yeah?” Merlin sighed, but the door swung open after a minute, and the rapid click of dog paws along the floor was followed by Eggsy Unwin.

In the flesh.

He looked at Harry awkwardly, quiet, for a long time. His hair had grown longer and he had it slicked back, and he was wearing joggers and an old t-shirt, casual for a day at the shooting range, no doubt.

“Hey, Harry,” Eggsy said, at last. His green eyes looked wet. “Um...it’s good to see you back. I mean. Awake, now, and all.” Harry found the corners of his mouth twitching into a smile, smiling at Eggsy being so out of place.

After a moment, he gestured as best he could for Eggsy to come over, and after a moment the younger man did so, shifting from foot to foot where he stood. He kept looking at Harry and looking away, like he couldn’t believe it—that if he stared too close, or stopped holding his breath, Harry would just vanish completely.

[ Illustration done by the amazing [Mona](http://lloydoholic.tumblr.com/)! ]

Harry gestured him closer, and Eggsy inched over, and finally, Harry lifted one arm to the younger man—and when Eggsy got what he was doing, he doubled over and slid onto Harry’s hospital bed and buried his face into the older man’s chest, nose digging into his collarbone. Harry wrapped his arm around him and held on, for a very long time, the cotton over his missing eye digging into his forehead where his face was pressed tightly against Eggsy’s skull.

“Thank you,” he murmured, at last.

Eggsy laughed, and then began to cry, and Harry held onto him, because even if Eggsy hadn’t known it, he’d made sure Harry had come home.

 

 

He arranged for James’ sister to get his ashes, once he could, and explained everything to her as best he was able, his words shaking. She cried, and he held her hands, and wondered what it would have been like, if he and James had stayed together.

 

 

Harry went to his family cemetery plot, and with Eggsy’s help cleared vines and old dirt off of his parent’s headstones, and they both carefully cleaned Harriet’s before he left a whole bouquet of flowers for her, and promised her he’d changed his will. Merlin helped him direct money back into rebuilding the charred remains of the family estate, and Harry felt peace from his sister, where before there had always been a hole in his chest. He put her portraits in a place of honour on his mantle, right next to Mr. Pickle, who had always been too good for the loo anyway.

 

 

And Eggsy?

Eggsy stayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for those of you who are interested, check out the 8tracks made to go with this fic over [here](http://8tracks.com/driftwoodq/kingsman-bb-we-are-bound)


End file.
